Italy suspends the Schengen agreement with Spain after the Ceuta migration crisis: about 60,000 people from Morocco entered the Spanish exclave in Africa. Authorities have confirmed 57 deaths among the migrants.
The Interior Ministry issued the measure, which takes effect on Saturday, 1 August, following information reviewed particularly by the Committee for the Analysis of Immigration and Border Security, which Minister Matteo Piantedosi chaired this morning at the Interior Ministry.
According to Adnkronos, Italy’s suspension of the Schengen arrangements with Spain has been ordered for one month, with the possibility of extension if the situation requires.
“The Government has decided to temporarily suspend the free movement regime provided by Schengen for maritime and air connections with Spain, reintroducing border controls. This is an extraordinary measure adopted to protect national security and to prevent possible repercussions for our country. The measure will be maintained only for the necessary time, with particular attention to limiting any impact on summer tourist flows,” Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said in a message on social media. “At the same time, Italy is ready to support any European initiative to assist Spanish institutions that is necessary to restore full control of the Union’s external borders and to address the situation firmly. Defending the borders means defending citizens’ security, combating irregular immigration and striking the criminal networks that traffic human beings,” she added.
Who the checks apply to
Checks will be reinstated on arrivals at ports and airports for those coming from Spain: the border police will carry out targeted and selective verifications of non-EU third-country nationals to ascertain possession of the documents required for travel within the Schengen area.
The reinstatement of checks, which will begin on Saturday, 1 August, will not change procedures for Italian, Spanish and other EU citizens traveling to Italy: they will continue, as usual, to be able to enter Italy without additional bureaucratic burdens. Nothing changes for those traveling from Italy to Spain.
Italy has also decided to strengthen controls along the border with France. Following a phone conversation between Minister Piantedosi and his French counterpart Laurent Nuñez, the two agreed on the opportunity to reinforce checks along the land border between the two countries within the framework of police cooperation agreements previously signed by France and Italy.
“The temporary suspension of Schengen with Spain is a necessary choice to protect the safety of our citizens and defend Europe’s borders. A measure foreseen by the treaties and made unavoidable today,” wrote Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani in a post on X after the Interior Ministry’s announcement.
What the Schengen Agreement is
Yesterday Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni suggested resorting to “extraordinary instruments to defend the borders and the safety of citizens, such as the suspension of the Schengen area with Spain” — the EU area of free movement that, since 1995, allows borderless travel between internal EU frontiers regardless of nationality. The area is governed by a set of rules that ensure its ongoing validity, with specific, time-limited exceptions.
Today the Schengen area includes 29 European countries: 25 EU member states plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland, which are not EU members but apply the same rules. Cyprus and Ireland remain EU members excluded from the area, while Bulgaria and Romania joined fully in 2024, after Croatia’s accession in 2023. The system is based on the absence of systematic checks at internal borders, but is complemented by police and judicial cooperation among states, a data-sharing system for wanted persons and objects, and the common Schengen visa policy, which allows stays of up to 90 days for non-EU citizens, together with strengthened controls at common external borders to compensate for the lack of internal border checks.
Before the measure announced today, according to the European Commission’s latest update on 23 July, 498 reintroductions of border controls had been notified since 2006. The most recent had been implemented by Italy from 24 to 26 July for borders with France, due to public order and internal security risks related to a festival in Val di Susa and risks to the TAV construction sites. Rome also reinstated checks at the border with Slovenia from 19 June to 18 December 2026 to address the “ongoing risk of terrorist infiltration in migratory flows” along the Balkan route, as well as crises in the Middle East and Ukraine, “high levels of irregular migration” and the “strong presence of smuggling and trafficking networks.”
Read also