Morocco had previously warned Spain that a recent Spanish court ruling that migrants arriving by sea would not face immediate removal was going to create “a problem,” a senior Moroccan official said.
Last week, at least 50,000 people, mostly Moroccans, entered the Spanish exclave of Ceuta, on foot or by swimming from the nearby city of Fnideq.
This unprecedented influx quickly overwhelmed the Spanish exclave in North Africa, before leading to thousands of returns to Morocco.
Spain’s Supreme Court ruled on 8 July that migrants arriving by sea should not be returned as quickly as others and Madrid has blamed criminal gangs for spreading misinformation about the ruling.
“We started engaging with the Spanish side around July 22–23, when the networks began talking about this,” the Moroccan senior official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Monday night.
“We discussed this ruling and its impact. We explained that this ruling was going to create a problem. And it did create a problem,” he said.
Spanish government spokeswoman Elma Saiz rejected the claim.
“At no point was there any evidence, any report that alerted us to the magnitude of this unprecedented event,” she told reporters in Madrid.
The Moroccan official argued the large movement of people into Ceuta was not a failure of Morocco’s security apparatus.
“It’s simplistic to say that Morocco should just have used force to stop them. That is to completely misunderstand this phenomenon,” he said.
“Could Spain, seeing them coming, have done something to stop them simply using weapons and security forces? That’s not possible.”
“At a certain point, the Moroccan law enforcement forces could no longer confront the migrants because the numbers were very large,” and because “the pull effect was very strong,” he said.
“It is not Morocco’s sole responsibility” to manage migration, he said, adding that the cost of migration management for the kingdom amounted to around €500 million per year.
He nonetheless said that Rabat and Madrid had acted “as reliable partners” and continued to work “in perfect coordination” on migration issues.
“Today, it is up to Spain to find answers to the challenges posed by this ruling,” he said.
“Morocco’s commitment remains the same. It accepts the return of those who manage to cross. It puts in place preventive measures to stop as many departures as possible, and it will continue” to do so, he said.
Saiz said Spain’s “exceptional response in such a short period of time” to the crisis would not have been possible without Morocco’s cooperation.
Additional sources • AFP