EU interior ministers agree to step up border security in response to the Ceuta crisis

EU interior ministers held an emergency videoconference on Tuesday to address the severe migrant crisis on the border between Morocco and the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. The ministers agreed on a collective need to strengthen the EU’s external borders.

The ministers agreed that moving forward they will enhance pre-frontier intelligence, deploy social media monitoring to disrupt smuggling networks, and deepen migration management partnerships with third countries.

"The EU is very united and the message is clear: We want to secure our external border better than ever, so that there is no room for chaos. Who comes, who stays and who leaves, must be determined by the EU and its member states, and we have to stick to this. Therefore, strengthening our border security, if necessary with physical barriers, is absolutely essential," noted Finnish Minister of the Interior, Mari Rantanen.

And while Spain says that almost all of the estimated 72,000 illegal migrants that recently flooded into Ceuta have been returned to Morocco, Croatian Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister Davor Božinović said that Europe must coordinate its response to illegal migration: "Our best protection at the external border is the simultaneous and unified application of all the tools that the Pact on Migration and Asylum puts at our disposal. I am convinced that Europe's response to these and similar challenges will be more and more coordinated, activating much stronger agencies, primarily FRONTEX, which is crucial for Croatia. FRONTEX's services are important to us when it comes to organizing the return of migrants or asylum seekers who do not meet the conditions to stay in Croatia or the European Union, and in our case that is the vast majority."

On Monday Minister Božinović suggested that along with organized crime some state sponsored actors were also involved in aiding and abetting illegal migrants in their goal of reaching Europe. He argued that this was an attempt to destabilize the EU through illegal migration.

Source: HRT