On July ۳۰, days after more than ۶۰,۰۰۰ people crossed into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta from Morocco, Italy announced it was reintroducing border controls with Spain.
Ceuta’s president, Juan Jesus Vivas, told broadcaster Telecinco that between ۳,۰۰۰ and ۵,۰۰۰ migrants remain in the enclave, as the vast majority have returned. At least ۷۲ people died in the crossing.
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Because Italy and Spain do not share a land border, the measure affects people travelling between the two countries by air and sea.
“In Italy, a lot of the media coverage was saying [Italian Prime Minister Giorgia] Meloni is suspending Schengen, or that Spain should be removed from Schengen,” Davide Colombi, a researcher in the Justice and Home Affairs unit at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), told Al Jazeera. “Neither of those options is actually available … you cannot kick a country out of Schengen.”
The Schengen Agreement, signed in ۱۹۸۵ and put into force a decade later, abolished passport checks at the internal borders of its ۲۹ member states, creating one of the world’s largest zones of free movement.
Colombi explained that suspending Schengen “doesn’t necessarily mean anything”.
“One member state cannot suspend Schengen. What it can do is temporarily reintroduce internal border controls,” he said.
Such controls are, in fact, a well-worn feature of the passport-free zone.
According to the Asylum Information Database (AIDA), run by the European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE), at least six member states – Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Norway and Sweden – have kept some form of internal controls almost continuously since ۲۰۱۵, and nine states maintained them throughout ۲۰۲۵.
Europe’s refugee crisis peaked in ۲۰۱۵, when more than a million people arrived in the European Union. Germany reinstated border controls with Austria after roughly ۴۰,۰۰۰ arrivals in one weekend; Austria, France, Sweden, Norway and Denmark soon followed.
‘Nothing more than political theatre’
But Italy’s move represents “the first time that a country has unilaterally reinstated Schengen border controls based on a large number of arrivals in a country with which it doesn’t share internal borders,” said Eleonora Testi, ECRE’s senior legal officer.
Colombi was more direct about the practical logic. “There is no realistic possibility for anybody from Ceuta to arrive in Italy,” he said.
Neither analyst sees the measure as a response to Ceuta itself so much as a template to demonstrate that a member state can invoke Schengen’s emergency provisions over a crisis unfolding in another territory, for reasons that are more political than operational.
That reading is echoed by rights groups.
“Italy’s reintroduction of border controls with Spain is nothing more than political theatre. It’s a savvy manipulation of EU law to show that the government is ‘tough on migration’, while effectively only causing problems to tourists and other people travelling from Spain to Italy [on a Schengen visa],” said Chiara Catelli, advocacy officer at the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants (PICUM).
Within days, ۲۲ EU member states signed a joint letter aligning with Italy’s position.
Testi contrasted this with the EU’s treatment of a comparable case, when Poland suspended the right to claim asylum at its border with Belarus in March ۲۰۲۵, in what AIDA described as a clear breach of EU and international law. There was no equivalent show of member-state solidarity – instead, an EU regulation was proposed to help Warsaw manage the crisis.
“There is a different response in this case,” Testi said, “probably because of the general political positions that Spain has held in comparison to most other European member states.”
At a time when most European countries shift towards tougher border and asylum measures, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s socialist government in Spain has pursued a comparatively liberal migration policy, leaning on economic integration and legal pathways rather than deterrence. Recently, Madrid invited undocumented people to apply for legalisation, allowing them to work – and more than a million did so.
For Colombi, Ceuta is not where Schengen’s unravelling began.
“The domino effect started back in ۲۰۱۵, and it’s been facilitated by the European Commission not doing anything about it,” he said.
Germany reintroduced controls with Poland in ۲۰۲۳ and again in ۲۰۲۵. Italy itself has maintained controls on its border with Slovenia. In June ۲۰۲۶, the commission issued formal opinions urging the nine states with controls in place over ۱۲ months to phase them out – guidance that appears to have had little practical effect.
“If you have the one body that is supposed to enforce and implement EU law not enforcing EU law,” Colombi said, “it basically leaves all member states doing whatever they want … responding to their national electorate based on fears that they themselves have created.”
That is the crux of the existential argument.
The European Pact on Migration and Asylum, meant to distribute responsibility more fairly across the bloc, became applicable on June ۱۲, barely six weeks before Italy’s move tested the scenario it was designed to manage.
“We’ve heard the narrative that the pact works, but only if arrivals are kept low … an asylum system has to function even in times of emergency,” said Testi.
‘Migration is not the existential threat it’s portrayed to be’
The political wrangling over migration comes at a critical time. Elections are due in ۲۰۲۷ in Italy, Spain and France.
“Depending on how the political tide changes … there might be centre-to-right-wing to extreme right-wing governments in all of Europe,” she said, and with them, less appetite for solidarity when the next country – “it could be Greece next time, it could be Bulgaria” – faces a surge of arrivals.
What led to the deadly Ceuta crossings – Moroccan pressure, a Spanish court ruling on deportations, or Spain’s regularisation policy – has been debated.
Jorge Tamames of Madrid’s Elcano Royal Institute called it “first and foremost a security, diplomatic, and humanitarian challenge, not a migratory one”.
But whatever caused the Ceuta crisis, the response is what CEPS and ECRE regard as the real test of the bloc’s cohesion.
“Schengen is not in crisis because of what’s happening within the EU,” Colombi said. “It’s how member states and the commission are dealing with these issues that is actually dismantling Schengen, dismantling freedom of movement for everybody … migration is not the existential threat it’s portrayed to be.”
He said the real threat to the EU is what happens when member states discover that invoking Schengen’s emergency powers against each other, for political reasons, carries no real cost.
