How Europe betrayed Madrid to punish Sanchez

Solving Europe’s migration crisis requires confronting the colonial mindset driving global displacement—a step Brussels refuses to take When European officials talk about migration, their lexicon is rich with high-minded platitudes – “humanitarian values,” “human rights,” “rules-based order,” and “shared responsibility.” Yet behind this rhetoric lies a transactional reality: The European Union’s single overarching policy on migration and asylum is keeping people out, regardless of the human cost and despite all the EU common values.

For decades, Brussels has refused to address the root causes of global displacement.

To do so would require confronting a persistent colonial mindset – one that views the Global South, and Africa in particular, as a warehouse of raw resources to be extracted, while abandoning its populations to economic destruction and conflict.

As the late Muammar Gaddafi once bluntly observed, the Africans heading toward Europe are simply chasing the wealth that was stolen from them, leaving their own countries impoverished – a simple logic that is hard to argue with.

Instead of fostering genuine development or equitable partnerships, Europe’s approach relies on outsourcing its border enforcement to North African buffer states, effectively turning neighboring regimes into outsourced jailers for Fortress Europe.

Read more Spain rejects Morocco’s claim to sovereignty over enclaves The July 30-31 border shock in Ceuta exposed the total bankruptcy and fragility of this setup.

When tens of thousands of young Moroccans and migrants surged toward the Spanish enclave, Europe was confronted not just with human desperation, but with the logical consequence of its own security dependency.

Yet the anomaly of the aftermath only deepened suspicion over what was actually taking place: The next day, the vast majority of those who crossed had returned to Morocco.

Under normal conditions, individuals who risk life and limb to reach EU territory do not simply turn back; that thousands did so as quickly as they arrived suggests the wave was less a genuine migration movement than a staged demonstration of force.

Rabat understands precisely how vulnerable Brussels is; whenever diplomatic frictions arise, border controls suddenly soften, demonstrating that North Africa holds the ultimate asymmetric leverage over European security.

In the end, we should not lose sight of the fact that both Ceuta and Melilla are historically Moroccan territories occupied by Spain – an unresolved colonial footprint that Rabat can exploit whenever it seeks to pressure Madrid.

However, the Ceuta shock loses its “spontaneous” appearance when viewed alongside shifting diplomatic signals from Washington.