The European Commission has confirmed it is weighing additional financial support for Spain to deal with the migration crisis in Ceuta, after receiving a first needs assessment from the Spanish authorities.
Commission spokesman Guillaume Mercier told the institution’s daily briefing on August 6 that talks with Madrid were now running at full capacity. He said the document had arrived on August 5 and that Commission services were examining it quickly.
Mercier gave no figure for the possible support, saying the analysis was still under way. The next step would be for Spain to lodge a formal funding request with Brussels.
Any money would come on top of what the European Union had already mobilised, according to the spokesman. It could pay for border management equipment and services as well as humanitarian and medical assistance.
Support could also be channelled through EU agencies, including Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, and the European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA).
Mercier said work was moving quickly because the situation on the ground was changing. He added that the Commission’s Directorate-General for Migration and Home Affairs had met senior Commission officials and the executive agencies on August 5 to coordinate information-sharing on what could be offered to Spain.
Spain is one of the member states receiving money under the Home Affairs Funds for 2021-2027, with an allocation of more than €1 billion. It has taken a further €114 million in emergency assistance and other Union actions, of which about €28 million went on migration management in Ceuta.
Frontex is already running a joint operation in Spain with officers deployed to support border management. The Commission said its offer of help to the Spanish authorities stood.
Home Affairs and Migration Commissioner Magnus Brunner said this week that the bloc had come through the Ceuta test, while pressing member states to apply new migration rules faster.
Spain’s Interior Ministry put the number of people who entered the enclave on July 30 at about 50,000, while Ceuta mayor-president Juan Jesús Vivas gave a figure of around 60,000. Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska later updated the total to some 72,000, of whom around 70,000 had returned to Morocco by August 4.
The official death toll stands at 72 on the Spanish side of the border and 11 on the Moroccan side.
EU interior ministers agreed at emergency talks on August 4 to tighten the bloc’s external borders, improve early warning systems and speed up returns.
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had already demanded an immediate halt to the crossings on July 31. “The images coming from Ceuta are unacceptable,” she said.
Madrid has still not requested the Frontex deployment offered to Grande-Marlaska by Brunner on July 30.
