Italy's Piantedosi defends Schengen suspension with Spain, won't lift before August 15

Piantedosi's testimony before the Schengen Committee

On August 13, Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi appeared before the parliamentary Schengen Committee to defend Italy's temporary reinstatement of border controls with Spain. He stated the suspension of the Schengen Agreement would not be reviewed before August 15 and only after all security risks for Italy were completely excluded. Piantedosi rejected any suggestion of a hostile act against Spain, calling the measure a cautelary and organizational choice to protect national security and the integrity of the European control system during a period of intense pressure.

I wish to reiterate that our decision to temporarily restore internal air and maritime border controls was not a measure directed against Spain or against any other partner. Any hostile act toward Spain is out of the question, a country bound to us by historic ties of friendship and brotherhood.

He insisted the government's action was "fully within European law," noting that other European states had done the same, including toward Italy, without eliciting concerns or requests for further examination.

The Ceuta migration crisis

Between July 30 and 31, the Spanish enclave of Ceuta experienced a sudden and massive irregular influx of approximately 72,000 third-country nationals, a number Piantedosi called particularly striking given Ceuta's population of about 83,000. Spanish authorities confirmed 83 deaths, while some sources put the actual toll above 140. Piantedosi said any narrative describing the situation as under control clashed with the facts and that the problem lay not in Madrid's efforts but in the objective ungovernability of a crisis of that scale.

Security assessments and terrorist risk

On July 31, the government convened the Committee for Immigration Analysis and Border Security, whose dossier identified elevated risk profiles for internal security linked to uncontrolled and sudden movements of third-country nationals through the common Schengen space, which did not exclude potential terrorist infiltrations in migrant flows. Piantedosi cited sources indicating that areas of Morocco near Ceuta have historically been exposed to jihadist recruitment and radicalization. He also noted that Spanish authorities feared a new mass arrival on August 15, linked to targeted social media campaigns urging thousands of non-EU citizens toward Ceuta, while Morocco was strengthening its security forces.

Migrants remaining in Ceuta

Despite Spanish repatriations in recent days, at least 6,000 people remained in Ceuta as of Piantedosi's testimony, with some sources citing over 11,000, predominantly sub-Saharan migrants for whom neither readmission nor return to Morocco appeared feasible. Over 1,300 unaccompanied foreign minors were among those who could not be repatriated. Since Italy restored border controls with Spain, Italian authorities carried out 3 arrests and rejected 21 third-country nationals, including 6 Moroccans.

Spanish counterposition

Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska countered Italy's security rationale, rejecting any terrorist threat or radicalization risk from the Ceuta crisis. In a press conference in the autonomous city, Marlaska pointed to cooperation with Morocco on terrorism as the basis for his assessment.

Cooperation with Morocco on terrorism is relevant and impeccable and this allows me to say that there is no risk of terrorism deriving from the crisis.

Piantedosi, in turn, described Madrid's own suspension of Schengen controls toward Italy as corresponding, by their own admission, to a "substantially retaliatory logic."