On July 30, 2026, Italy announced it was reinstating border controls with Spain days after more than 60,000 people crossed into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta from Morocco. Ceuta’s president, Juan Jesus Vivas, told broadcaster Telecinco that between 3,000 and 5,000 migrants remain in the enclave, with the vast majority having returned.

Because Italy and Spain do not share a land border, the new controls affect travelers between the two countries by air and sea. According to the Asylum Information Database (AIDA), managed by the European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE), at least six EU member states have maintained some form of internal border controls almost continuously since 2015, with nine states doing so throughout 2025.

Eleonora Testi, ECRE’s senior legal officer, said Italy’s move is unprecedented: “the first time that a country has unilaterally reinstated Schengen border controls based on a large number of arrivals in a country with which it doesn’t share internal borders.”

Chiara Catelli, advocacy officer at the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants (PICUM), described the move as a “savvy manipulation of EU law to show that the government is ‘tough on migration’, while effectively only causing problems to tourists and other people travelling from Spain to Italy [on a Schengen visa].”

Observers note that this development is part of a broader trend starting in 2015, which has been facilitated by the European Commission’s inaction. The migrant surge in Ceuta has also led to at least 72 deaths and hundreds of migrant minors stranded in the enclave, prompting the EU to call an emergency meeting on the situation.

Sources