EU should use ‘all leverage’ to strengthen partnership with Morocco: Commissioner

EU Commissioner for Internal Affairs and Migration Magnus Brunner said Thursday that the bloc should use “all the leverage” at its disposal, including visa policy, trade and development cooperation, to strengthen its partnership with Morocco following the recent surge in irregular migrant crossings into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta.

Addressing an extraordinary meeting of the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE), Brunner said the recent events in Ceuta underscored the importance of cooperation with neighboring countries.

“We need to do to use all the leverage we have as a European Union. That is visa policy on the first end, but that’s a more general perspective: trade, development. So we really have to use all the leverage we have, and that’s what we are also doing with Morocco, of course,” he said.

Brunner said the European Commission remained confident that its close partnership with Morocco would continue to produce results, noting that the two sides were negotiating a comprehensive partnership agreement in which migration is a key component.

The commissioner described the mass arrivals in Ceuta as an unprecedented challenge, saying “nothing on this scale has happened at any EU external border in a single day in 20 years.”

He argued that while the incident exposed vulnerabilities at the bloc’s external borders, the EU ultimately managed to contain the situation.

“The integrity of the Schengen area was preserved, and the situation has been contained,” Brunner said, adding that those who entered Ceuta irregularly had returned to Morocco.

He also credited special provisions under the Schengen Borders Code with preventing onward movement from Ceuta to mainland Spain and other EU member states.

Brunner stressed that cooperation with third countries was essential to preventing similar incidents in the future but warned that relying solely on the goodwill of neighboring states left the EU exposed.

“To have control, we must cooperate with our neighbors, of course. But as long as control depends on the goodwill of one neighboring state, we remain vulnerable,” he said.

The commissioner also said the EU would step up efforts to combat migrant smugglers’ use of social media to facilitate irregular migration.

The LIBE committee convened the extraordinary videoconference to discuss the situation in Ceuta with the city’s Mayor-President Juan Jesus Vivas Lara and Brunner following the recent surge in irregular crossings from neighboring Morocco.