Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez Calls EU Opposition to Mass Migration “Selfish”
Standing against what he calls “selfish” motives of European leadership, Spain’s socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez says tolerance for mass illegal migration must win over the loud voices of short-sighted nationalism.
According to Sanchez, these EU regulations and rules against the dreams of sub-Saharan Africans are polarizing and stopping migrants from fulfilling their greatest aspirations.
Telegraph – via MSM – Pedro Sánchez has criticised “selfish” EU leaders after 22 European prime ministers and presidents attacked him for the sudden migrant surge in Ceuta.
Spain’s prime minister wrote a letter to the heads of the EU institutions after Italy and France ramped up border controls in response to the 60,000 Moroccan migrants who stormed the Spanish enclave in North Africa.
[…] “In the current international context, the European Union cannot afford this kind of selfish, polarising and unlawful reaction,” wrote Mr Sánchez, one of the few remaining socialist leaders in the EU, as he called for an emergency meeting.
He criticised those who “have chosen to attack Spain and to call for its temporary exclusion from the Schengen Area”.
But Mr Sánchez was isolated after 22 EU leaders, including Ms Meloni and Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, wrote their own letter to Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president; António Costa, the European Council president; and Micheál Martin, the Irish prime minister, whose country holds the presidency of the EU.
The letter addressing the “serious concern” over the threat to the EU border was signed by the leaders of Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Sweden.
They singled out Mr Sánchez’s migrant amnesty for criticism. In early July, some 609,737 of the 1.17 million migrants in Spain who applied for legal status obtained temporary work permits, making it the largest regularisation of black market workers in European history. (read more)
On Saturday, Spain said it had returned “almost everyone” to Morocco and that it was not possible to travel from Ceuta or Melilla to mainland Spain without presenting identification at a police checkpoint, guaranteeing the “integrity of the Schengen area”.
Mr Sánchez, who rushed to Ceuta on Friday and faces elections next year, accused people-smuggling gangs of trying to exploit a recent ruling made by the Spanish supreme court, which decided migrants stopped at sea while trying to reach Ceuta or Melilla could not be summarily returned to Morocco.