Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has urged Spain to tighten border controls after tens of thousands of migrants entered the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, saying Madrid must follow Warsaw’s example “if Schengen is to survive.”
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has urged Spain to tighten border controls after tens of thousands of migrants entered the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, saying Madrid must follow Warsaw’s example “if Schengen is to survive.”
Belarus and Russia organized transport to the very border from source countries. It was clearly motivated to sow discord in Poland & EU and not for humanitarian reasons. Its not like Poles pushed back Russians/Belarussians fed up with their domestic shit.
And what happened in Ceuta? Who was crossing the border and why?
I’m not sure I understand your question. Obviously they want to move to Spain/EU. There are speculations that Morroccan government looked the other way when there was a big influx of people to the border, but it was native Morroccans so not comparable to Poland situation where its clear that desire to migrate was instrumentalized for political purposes.
In its April 8, 2026 judgment, Spain’s Supreme Court upheld the practice of “hot returns” for migrants who cross Ceuta’s land border by climbing or breaching its border fences.
However, the court ruled that the same immediate pushback mechanism does not apply to migrants who reach Spanish territory by sea.
According to officials, human trafficking networks quickly seized on the legal distinction.
Smugglers allegedly circulated messages on social media claiming that migrants who reached Ceuta by swimming would be protected from immediate deportation. Thousands then attempted the sea crossing, overwhelming Spain’s border infrastructure and creating a legal bottleneck for authorities.
Moroccan authorities have not yet issued a statement, and it is unclear how hard they tried to prevent the crossings.
However, the crossing could be linked to the rivalry between Morocco and Algeria, and a recent trip by the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, to Algiers.
The last mass border crossing, in May 2021, took place after Morocco loosened border controls during a diplomatic row with Spain over Spain’s decision to allow the leader of the Western Sahara independence movement, the Polisario Front, to be treated for Covid-19 in Spain.
Matteo Villa, a migration researcher at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies, said politics was most likely involved. “What happened in 2021 was the small-scale version of what happened yesterday,” he said. “I mean, 50,000 people do not come overnight when usually it’s hundreds per month. Sánchez going to Algeria is something Morocco didn’t really like.”
Villa suggested Morocco may have loosened the border as a way of showing it has “the upper hand”, especially because authorities there know it would cause an overreaction in Europe. “They love seeing all the fighting between European countries,” he added.
The people Russia and Belarus were moving to Polish border also wanted to move to EU. They were paying people smugglers to get to EU using supposedly safe route.
In both cases it’s just governments using poor people to cause problems for their neighbor. How far did those people travel from is a meaningless distinction. The instrumentation is exactly the same.