The head of the government of the Spanish exclave of Ceuta today asked in Brussels for help from the European Union to guarantee the territorial integrity of this territory, after 70,000 migrants arrived en masse from Morocco at the end of July, Agence France-Presse reported, BTA reported.
A little more than a month after this invasion, the situation in Ceuta remains tense, Juan Jesus Vivas told journalists. According to him, Ceuta is “a pressure cooker that can explode at any moment“.
“That is why we will ask for Europe to have a permanent presence in Ceuta“, in particular through the Frontex agency, which is responsible for monitoring the EU's external borders.
Vivas made these statements ahead of a planned meeting with two European commissioners in Brussels.
The leader of Ceuta, who is a member of Spain's centre-right People's Party, also accused Morocco of being behind the mass influx of people "through action or inaction."
"Do you think it is possible to mobilize 80,000, 90,000 or 100,000 people without Morocco and the Moroccan authorities knowing about it?", Juan Jesús Vivas said.
He added that Morocco had used "migratory pressure to threaten the territorial integrity of Ceuta, Spain and Europe."
This "intolerable" situation must receive a "firm response from Europe, telling Morocco that if we want "a fruitful and mutually beneficial policy of cooperation, we must start with respect - first of all for the borders."
Yesterday, the Spanish judiciary officially opened an investigation into the entry of tens of thousands of migrants at the end of July into the North African enclave of Ceuta, citing, among other things, the existence of data suggesting "undoubted management favoring" this process by Morocco.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, for his part, told MEPs last Thursday that there was "no evidence" of Moroccan involvement in this sudden influx of migrants.
In Brussels, Vivas is due to meet today with the European Commissioner for Migration, Magnus Brunner, and the European Commissioner for the Mediterranean, Dubravka Schuyca. The two representatives of the European executive will also meet with the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albarres to “discuss the situation on the ground”, a European Commission spokesman said on Tuesday.
Vivas is also asking the European institutions for financial assistance to allow Ceuta to achieve the final return of all those who entered the territory at the end of July, as well as to strengthen the exclave's infrastructure.
Although the vast majority of these migrants have returned shortly after their arrival, several thousand of them - around 5,000 according to the central government and 10,000 according to local authorities - are still in the exclave.
At the same time, the Spanish government has declassified intelligence reports on the mass entry of illegal migrants into Ceuta from Morocco at the end of July. This is being done in the hope of dispelling doubts about what the executive knew before the crisis and about Rabat's role in these events.