00:00 Intro
00:35 60,000 People Poured In Overnight
01:58 Crossing Borders in Massive Numbers at Once, How Was It Possible?
03:10 "Getting Cozy with Algeria? That Makes Me Furious!"
04:28 Sparks Spreading Across All of Europe

This is Paris. Today, we are going to talk about immigrants. European news is currently dominated by the situation in Ceuta. Last week, shocking scenes were broadcasted in South Korea as well, showing countless people breaking down border checkpoints and flooding in endlessly. Frankly, even when I saw the initial footage, I thought it might have been generated by AI. That place is called Ceuta, and last weekend, around 60,000 Moroccans poured into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta.

1. 60,000 People Poured In Overnight
Spanish troops have now been deployed, and the majority of the people have been sent back to Morocco.

[Spanish military announcement: Please go back. There will be no disadvantages in Spain or Morocco.]

Regrettably, as tens of thousands of people flocked to the border all at once, more than 70 Moroccans lost their lives. With 60,000 people flooding into Ceuta—a place with a population of just over 80,000—it certainly wouldn't have been easy for the residents of Ceuta to remain calm and handle the situation casually, no matter how harmless the Moroccans intended to be. To put it in perspective for us, it would be as if 500,000 people from China or Japan suddenly poured into Jeju Island, which has a population of around 700,000, without permission within a day or two.

[Lidia / Resident of Ceuta, Spain: If the migrants have nowhere to eat and sleep, they will break into our homes. They will drive us out and attack us.]

To briefly explain Ceuta, it is not attached to the Spanish mainland, but is Spanish territory located on the African continent. As a city bordering Morocco, it has been a place where quite a few Moroccans illegally entered in the past. Back in 2021, about 8,000 people crossed over at once, but this is the first time an astronomical number of 60,000 people has entered all at once. Spanish border control officers were stationed around the border at the time. However, the sight of them standing there helplessly and unable to do anything was striking and shocking.

2. Crossing the Border En Masse at Once: How Was It Possible?
How was it possible for such an unprecedented, massive number of people to cross the border all at once? Since the early stages of the crisis, various media outlets have been reporting and Spanish authorities have been investigating to answer this question. They haven't found a definitive answer yet. However, what is clear is that it was not an organized action. That said, multiple testimonies emerged that border surveillance on the Moroccan side had slackened. The common narrative is that as that news spread rapidly via social media within Morocco, people wanting to escape Morocco flocked to the border all at once. In Morocco, where youth unemployment approaches 30%, young people in particular have a very strong drive to escape Morocco, go to Europe to earn money, and help their families back home.

[Migrant of Moroccan origin: There are no good teachers, and life in Morocco is difficult. That's why I swam all the way here.]

Ultimately, while the situation was not created by a premeditated, organized plan, the Moroccan government can certainly be seen as having provided the initial trigger for this crisis by slackening border surveillance in a place brimming with the will to escape Morocco.

3. "Getting Cozy with Algeria? That Makes Me Furious!"
Why on earth did the Moroccan government neglect border surveillance at this particular time, effectively letting illegal immigrants break through the Spanish border in one fell swoop? Here, another country appears alongside Spain and Morocco: Algeria. To put it briefly, Morocco and Algeria are neighboring countries. They are at odds over border territories. They harbor an animosity toward each other, yet the Spanish Prime Minister visited Algeria on June 20, about ten days before the Ceuta crisis. Spain had originally maintained a pro-Morocco stance. When Spain visited Algeria and showed signs of strengthening cooperative relations, Morocco naturally had every reason to be furious. Just ten days later, the Ceuta border was overwhelmingly breached by Moroccans. While there is no definitive proof to pinpoint that the Moroccan government planned this as an act of retaliation, a rational suspicion can be raised that the Moroccan government's sloppy border management and implicit condoning of illegal immigration are somehow connected. For these and other reasons, although the entire world witnessed the shocking border-neutralization incident, the local situation in Ceuta is returning to daily life as the majority of Moroccans are being expelled.

4. Sparks Spreading Across All of Europe
The problem, however, is that the fallout has spread to the whole of Europe. Immigration is such a severe issue that hardly any country in Europe is quiet about it. A major reason why extreme-right or conservative forces are gaining support in Europe is precisely their stance on taking hardline responses to immigration. When the Ceuta crisis erupted under these circumstances, other European countries immediately began criticizing the Spanish government. They argued that Spain brought this upon itself due to poor border management, and questioned what would happen if illegal immigrants entered their own countries through flimsy Spain. Italy immediately announced that it would conduct immigration checks exclusively on travelers arriving from Spain for a month. France also tripled the number of roadside border inspection personnel stationed along its border with Spain to tighten surveillance. As you may know, European countries signed the Schengen Agreement, allowing people to cross borders freely without passport controls. Suspending this exception for travelers departing from Spain is being considered, and although direct measures haven't been taken yet, countries like Finland, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden have publicly endorsed Italy's tightened immigration inspection measures. Finland's Interior Minister even strongly criticized Spain for completely failing to protect the Schengen area border. Moreover, this time, even the head of the EU, the European Commission President, stepped up to demand that Spain take prompt action, stating that illegal immigration cannot be tolerated. The Commission President usually maintains a relatively neutral stance on issues that could cause friction among EU member states, but a shocking number of 60,000 people flooding in must have left her with no other choice. In fact, although Ceuta is Spanish territory, people cannot move freely to the rest of Europe like they can from the Spanish mainland. Identity verification is required when entering not just other countries, but even the Spanish mainland. Knowing full well about these circumstances, politicians in other countries are adopting hardline stances because public sentiment against immigration is extremely poor. Caught between citizens criticizing them at home and facing reproaches from abroad, the Spanish government seems quite aggrieved. They hold particular resentment toward Italy, countering with arguments that since 2021, illegal entries into Italy have been twice as numerous as those into Spain, telling Italy to mind its own business. While maintaining that the Ceuta crisis was clearly an incident where Spain's territory was violated and promising to do better in the future, Spain is urging that EU member states should not break solidarity by tightening mutual entry inspections. However, because other European countries had already harbored accumulated grievances against Spain for being relatively lenient toward illegal immigrants, Spain is currently facing heavy backlash. This week, EU interior ministers are holding an urgent meeting to discuss countermeasures and ways to handle the situation. For now, the Ceuta crisis does not appear set to worsen further. Yet, this incident has once again confirmed how volatile the immigration issue is and how fragile a link it remains in Europe, where public sentiment toward immigrants is steadily worsening. Consequently, second and third Ceuta crises could erupt at any time.

Reported by Kwon Yeongin | Produced by Shin Hee-suk | Video by Kim Si-nae | Video Editing by Jang Yu-jin | Design by Lee Su-min | Produced by SBS Digital News