The reaction

Ceuta, Meloni: ‘Defending the EU’s borders is a shared responsibility’

Giorgia Meloni commented on X on the letter that Italia and Denmark had put forward at the European Union summit regarding the crisis in Ceuta, which was signed by a total of 22 heads of state and government

by Rome Editorial Staff

1 August 2026

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2' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

Key points

The crisis
Suspension of the Schengen Agreement
The letter
Border defence is a shared responsibility of the EU

2' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

“It is an important signal.” With these words, Giorgia Meloni commented on X on the letter that Italia and Denmark had put forward at the European Union summit regarding the crisis in Ceuta, which was signed by a total of 22 heads of state and government.

For the Prime Minister, this is not merely a response to the current emergency, but confirmation of a political course that has been advocated for years: “The position that Italia has long upheld is now shared by an ever-increasing number of European nations.”

The crisis

This demand comes against the backdrop of one of the most serious migration crises in recent years: eighteen people have died whilst attempting to swim to the Spanish enclave, a bus and seven vehicles have been set alight during clashes with the police, and tens of thousands of people have crossed the border in the space of a few weeks.

Suspension of the Schengen Agreement

Meloni has chosen to proceed on two parallel fronts. On the first – the bilateral front with Madrid – the Italian government has ordered the temporary suspension of the Schengen free movement agreement with Spain, a decision which prompted the Spanish Foreign Ministry to summon the Italian ambassador in protest.

The letter

On the second front – the multilateral one – the Prime Minister, together with her Danish counterpart Mette Frederiksen, has championed the diplomatic initiative that sets out her position on repatriation and the fight against people-smugglers in a joint letter signed by 22 countries — including Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Greece, Poland, Sweden and Finland — but not by Spain and France.

In the letter, addressed to the President of the European Council, Mr Costa, the President of the Commission, Ms von der Leyen, and the President-in-Office of the Council of the EU, Mr Micheál Martin, the signatories call for the urgent convening of an extraordinary video conference of interior ministers to jointly assess the situation and define a coordinated European response.

It is the same line of argument that Meloni puts forward in her post: strengthening external borders, combating traffickers, more effective repatriation and eliminating the factors that encourage new illegal entries — a reference, the latter of which, in the letter, translates into an explicit criticism of mass regularisations, and which revives the controversy surrounding the amnesty for half a million people introduced by the Sánchez government, albeit without mentioning it directly.

Border defence is a shared responsibility of the EU

The second part of Meloni’s message shifts the focus from the merits of repatriation to a matter of principle: ‘Defending the Union’s external borders is not in the interests of a single nation. It is a shared responsibility for Europe’. This statement turns on its head the accusation levelled in recent days by Madrid against those countries – such as Italia – that have responded by suspending the Schengen Agreement: for the Prime Minister, it is not the Italian-Danish initiative that calls European solidarity into question, but the lack of a timely, joint response.