Sari Arho Havrén
Madrid itself has notably not blamed Morocco, and therefore it is interesting how this is demanded from other governments. What the Spanish government has actually said: Sánchez and other Spanish officials attributed the crossings to human trafficking networks that allegedly misrepresented a recent Supreme Court ruling on migrant returns, and Spain has explicitly rejected suggestions that Morocco manufactured the crisis as retaliation for Madrid’s diplomatic reconciliation with Algeria. Sánchez has instead stressed that his government is working with Moroccan authorities to restore normalcy. Madrid has demanded no accountability from Rabat and avoided the instrumentalisation framing. Moroccan sources have blamed “criminal organisations,” and publicly Sánchez has used similar language. The EU can hardly attribute a hybrid operation more loudly than Madrid itself, which has actively rejected that framing. That’s the structural difference from Belarus 2021, where Lithuania and Poland led the attribution, and the EU amplified it. However, I agree that what member states have actually done is closer to the opposite of solidarity and solidarity is warranted regardless of attribution: an external EU border was overwhelmed, and 60+ people died. Morocco holds the same structural leverage over Spain and the EU that Turkey secured after 2016: outsourced border control with no enforcement mechanism behind it. That’s the uncomfortable truth; the EU has built a system in which the instrumentalisation claim almost doesn’t matter, because it cannot afford to act on it either way.
Mathieu von Rohr
22 der 27 EU-Staats- und Regierungschefs haben einen Brief unterzeichnet, der Spanien die Schuld an Ceuta gibt. Keiner von ihnen nennt Marokko, das 50.000 Menschen durchgelassen hat. Europa darf sich von außen nicht auf diese Weise spalten lassen.