Meloni fuels the migratory shock
The European far-right, including the Spanish one, has been very quick and forceful in taking advantage of the Moroccan migratory pressure on Spain in Ceuta, a propagandistic and dramatic gesture, to distance themselves from Pedro Sánchez's government, the government of regularization. It doesn't matter that what Meloni, Abascal, and company call an "invasion" will ultimately have been a one-day episode: the massive arrival was followed by a massive return. And it doesn't matter that more than fifty young people have died at sea: the far-right leaders have not spoken about this humanitarian drama. What Italy and Finland are concerned with is reinforcing the idea of the need to fortify Europe, an idea that does not fit with the demand for labor and that follows in the wake of the xenophobic discourse of the"America first that the United States of Trump have also embraced.
The Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, was very quick to assert herself by staging a supposed break with Spain of the Schengen Treaty, which, however impossible, she later had to qualify. A diplomatic crisis has been served. But beyond the Meloni-Sánchez or Italy-Spain clash, such a gesture opens a general crisis in the European Union, where the free movement of people has been a pillar of continental architecture since 1995, over three decades ago, from a political, social, and economic perspective. It is true that the 2015 refugee crisis shook free movement without tolls or filters in central Europe, and that this past June common migratory policy has been toughened. But Meloni's unilateral decision, despite the nuances, is a precedent and a further step in this direction.
One step, on the other hand, that does not correspond to the reality of numbers and facts. Regardless of whether the Ceuta crisis is being resolved with unusual speed, data indicates that the most important irregular border crossings are located in the eastern Mediterranean (Greece-Turkey), in the Italian Mediterranean, and the English Channel between France and England. The Iberian Peninsula is far below in this ranking, and the Canary Islands are even further back. In fact, in 2025 Italy received 66,328 illegal immigrants compared to Spain's 36,775. Furthermore, overall, from June 2025 to June 2026, there has been a clear slowdown in arrivals. And, moreover, the data also contradicts the idea, so discursively exploited by the European right's loudspeakers, that Spanish regularizations – for example, that of the Zapatero government in 2005 – caused a pull effect. It did not happen.
It is also debatable whether the sudden influx that has now occurred in Ceuta has a direct cause-and-effect relationship with the recent Spanish regularization: it should rather be attributed to a mix of internal frictions within Morocco and to regional geopolitics, with the role of Algeria, the situation in the Sahara, and US pressure on Rabat regarding Israel. The analysis at this time is very open. And Morocco's silence leaves ample room for speculation.
In any case, the European far-right is winning the narrative battle and is managing to push the EU increasingly towards anti-immigration positions. Meloni wants to lead the way. It is the politics of fear that the traditional right is adopting, even if it is for another fear: that of losing electoral ground.