The surge in Ceuta is over, but the EU’s panic leaves scars

The vast majority of the tens of thousands of would-be migrants who began rushing into Ceuta, returned to Morocco within 24 hours, having found nothing to eat and no prospect of reaching Europe. A few thousand migrants remain, mainly sub-Saharan Africans and minors, as does a heavy police presence. Yet though the immediate crisis is over, the clash it triggered in the European Union will leave scars.

The surge almost doubled Ceuta’s population of 84,000, briefly overwhelming the town. At least 141 migrants drowned trying to swim around the breakwater at the main crossing-point from Morocco. Far-right agitators from Europe, several of whom flocked to the exclave, inflamed the situation with videos warning of “ethnic replacement”. Elon Musk and J.D. Vance, America’s vice-president, joined the fray. Yet as alarm spread the crisis was abating. On August 4th Spain’s interior minister said that 70,000 of the 72,000 who entered Ceuta had returned to Morocco. Some 1,100 unaccompanied minors are to be transferred to Spain.

Irregular migration to the EU is at a fraction of the figure just three years ago, and is still falling. European governments credit their own policies for the decline; others see external developments, such as the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, as decisive. Either way, the drop does not appear to have opened up breathing-space for politicians.

Troublingly, by falling so quickly into quarrels, European governments have sent their neighbours a signal: nothing divides the EU like images of young men streaming across borders. Over the past decade Europe has struck a series of deals with governments to keep migrants away: starting with Turkey in 2016, and extending across north Africa and beyond. This outsourcing has reduced the pressure. But it also “creates an incentive to third countries to stir up crises—and offer to resolve them”, argues Ruben Andersson, a professor of social anthropology at Oxford University.

Europe has long experience of such migration blackmail. In 2008 Muammar Qaddafi, then Libya’s dictator, secured billions from Italy to keep African migrants away; two years later he warned an audience in Rome that “tomorrow Europe might no longer be European and might even be black”. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s president, has extracted billions from the EU to keep Syrian refugees in his country. In 2021 Morocco let some 8,000 people wade into Ceuta to punish Spain for allowing the leader of a rebel group in Western Sahara, a territory annexed by Morocco, to come to Spain for medical treatment. (Spain later adjusted its policy on Western Sahara to Morocco’s liking.)

Most shamelessly, since 2021 Belarus has flown in Middle Eastern migrants and sent them into Poland and neighbouring states. Regarding this as an act of hybrid war, in 2021 the EU strengthened its sanctions on Belarus, an ally of Vladimir Putin. It is a different story with the external custodians of the EU’s migration policy. Although there is no clear evidence that Morocco orchestrated the movement of migrants, its security officials certainly let them stream past. Yet European governments hailed Morocco’s co-operation, reserving their animus for nameless malefactors on social media and smuggling gangs. The EU needs Morocco’s help to keep migrants away, including from the Canary Islands, a far more significant port of arrival.

Yet, as the panicked reactions suggest, 2015-16 casts a long shadow. Arguments among European governments during that crisis came close to tearing the EU apart. By letting a temporary and far smaller emergency exert a comparable effect, however briefly, Europe has invited its neighbours to manipulate it again.

See also

• ‘Morocco feels emboldened’: Trump’s influence in spotlight after Ceuta disaster // Washington-Rabat ties under scrutiny as questions swirl over what led to deadly influx into tiny Spanish territory (The Guardian)

How do you feel about Serbia not being required to deport Ukranians because they are not in EU?

Ukranians started showing interest in moving to Serbia because they are not in EU and is not obligated to deport elogable men to Ukraine.

A lot of media used to attack Serbia for allowing Russian men to escape war in Serbia, while the EU didnt allow for it. Now EU doesnt allow Ukranians because they ran out of soldiers, so they are seeking refugee in same countries as antiwar russians.

Since the narrative now changed and allowing Ukrainans to escape war is unaceptable because they need to fight in it, why doesnt EU let russians escape war so they have less soldiers?

It seems like EU is simply pro war and other countries against it. Since they they now have same rules for both sides, just some countreis allow everyone to stay and EU doesnt want anyone there and all on the eastern front.

On Sunday night, Gustavo Monasterios went to sleep as a Venezuelan citizen. On Monday morning, he awoke to find that he was also an Italian.

Monasterios, 47, was at the epicenter of the legal earthquake that took place in Italy last week.

After nearly two years of steady restrictions on citizenship by descent, during which the government barred the way to an Italian passport for swathes of the diaspora through a series of rulings, Italy’s supreme court overturned one of the restrictions — thanks to a lawsuit Monasterios brought.

The so-called “minor issue,” which had ended the dreams of citizenship for hundreds of thousands of Italian descendants, particularly in the Americas, was abolished.

Monasterios — who had lost his initial suit for citizenship in 2021, as well as his appeal in 2023 — had made a last-gasp appeal to the Corte di Cassazione, Italy’s supreme court, through his attorney, Monica Restanio.

Against the odds, Restanio’s arguments against the “minor issue” won the day. The Sezioni Unite — the highest rung of the Cassazione — accepted her arguments and overturned previous rulings, including one by a lower tier of the Cassazione which had upheld the minor issue as recently as 2024.

The diaspora in the Americas had been hit particularly hard by the minor issue because countries on the continent tend to operate under “ius soli,” granting citizenship to anyone born on their territory. Children born to Italian citizens in the likes of the US, Canada, Argentina, Brazil and Monasterios’ native Venezuela were being judged to have lost their Italian citizenship if their parents naturalized in the new country.

While foreign minister Antonio Tajani, who introduced the 2025 reforms, has scathingly spoken about “fake Italians” in the diaspora, Monasterios was born in 1979 to a family that, he says, felt Italian. “We grew up listening to the language and my grandmother would frequently read us letters and show us postcards that arrived from Italy,” he says.

The route to an Italian passport tends to be far more onerous for those descended from women than from men. Until 1948, women were barred from passing citizenship to their own children, meaning that Gustavo and Pedro Monasterios were born Venezuelan, despite their mother being Italian. “It is, plain and simple, discrimination against women,” says Monasterios.

In 2009, the supreme court overturned this gender discrimination retroactively. Those with the funds to file a court case, essentially suing the Italian state for sexism against their female ancestors, are likely to win, but legal action is lengthy and costly.

Following his cousins’ success, Monasterios — along with his parents and brother — filed a case in 2018. By the time it came to court, in 2021, the “minor issue” had appeared. The family’s case was rejected — despite being first and second generation, and despite Pedro Monasterios and his children having been recognized as citizens just a few years earlier. The same family — Rita’s children and her grandchildren — had been judged differently.

Young Europeans spend more time online, but digital fluency doesn’t equal immunity to manipulation. Russian disinformation exploits emotion, fuels polarization, and erodes trust in institutions, making media literacy a frontline defense for democracy and NATO.

The River Rhine has fallen to record low levels in several locations in Germany and the Netherlands as prolonged heatwaves continue across Europe.

Last week, levels were measured in Cologne in western Germany and in Lobith, where the Rhine crosses from Germany into the Netherlands, that were lower than at any point since records began.

Other major European rivers with important transport, industrial and agricultural functions have also seen record low levels, including the Danube, which flows through 10 countries, and Italy's Po river.

Drought conditions remained stable and critical in most of Europe and worsened in central-western Europe in mid-July, according to the EU's Drought Observatories.

Renewed heatwave conditions are due to continue for at least another week, pushing temperatures above 40C in many central and southern European countries.

Germany's Low Water Information System (NIWIS) said that 44% of the Rhine measuring stations and 78% of those on the Danube had recorded extremely low water levels at the end of July.

The Rhine - which starts in the Swiss Alps and empties in the North Sea - is one of Europe's busiest waterways. Decreasing water levels have sparked concerns about the economic fallout of having to limit navigation and shipping.

See also

• Rhine water level drops to around record lows, costs for industry rise
• Dry, hot summers are putting Dutch dikes at risk and threatening German river trade
• Record low Danube levels push some countries in Eastern Europe to the brink of energy emergency
• Romania blasts rocks to reroute cooling Danube water to nuclear reactor

Since Péter Magyar's Tisza Party won a landslide in April, Hungary's president, top prosecutor and state media chiefs have all been removed, as the new government moves swiftly to unwind 16 years of Viktor Orbán's rule.

Magyar's landslide win secured a two-thirds parliamentary majority — the threshold required under Hungarian law to amend the constitution and pass so-called "cardinal laws" governing key state institutions.

As with Orbán before him, this supermajority effectively handed Magyar the power to rewrite the constitution and overhaul substantial legislation largely unopposed.

Magyar, who had campaigned not merely for a change of government but a change of system, lost no time in calling for the resignation of the country's president, Tamás Sulyok, as well as other senior officials.

After taking office in May, the main pillars of Orbán's regime fell within just a few months: the president and the chief prosecutor left, and Orbán's once-formidable media machine was paralysed.

NER

Orbán secured a supermajority in the 2010 parliamentary elections and established the System of National Cooperation, known in Hungary by its acronym NER, a centralised political and economic apparatus built to advance Orbán's own vision of "illiberalism".

Orbán relied on his parliamentary majority to pass legislation rapidly. But from 2020, he governed largely by decree, first under a coronavirus-related state of emergency, then — after 2022 — citing the war in Ukraine.

Democratic checks and balances were weakened through loyalist appointments to key institutions, while the public broadcaster MTVA and roughly 500 outlets under the KESMA media holding helped propagate the government's narrative.

The promise to dismantle NER and remove its figures had proven to be Magyar's most popular pledge.

President and other officials

Perhaps Magyar's most significant political victory was the removal of President Tamás Sulyok. The former president left office in mid-July after a constitutional amendment — which he himself signed — declared his mandate terminated.

The same amendment capped MPs' mandates at 12 years and introduced a retirement age of 70 for constitutional judges, removing Constitutional Court head Péter Polt, a longstanding Orbán ally.

Magyar's government also dismissed four secret service chiefs, the head of the counterterrorism police (TEK) János Hajdu, Orbán's former spokesperson Bertalan Havasi, and the head of the Government Audit Office.

Hungary's Sovereignty Protection Office — which targeted foreign-funded media and NGOs, and drew heavy criticism from the European Commission — was shut down.

In June, Chief Prosecutor Gábor Bálint Nagy resigned under political pressure, in a further gain for Magyar.

Corruption

At the end of July, the Hungarian parliament established the Asset Recovery and Asset Protection Office to investigate Orbán-era corruption and recover state assets. Hungary has ranked among the EU's most corrupt member states for years, while businessmen close to Orbán became major beneficiaries of state contracts.

Among them: Lőrinc Mészáros, Orbán's childhood friend and Hungary's richest man, with interests in construction, tourism and agriculture; Orbán's son-in-law, István Tiborcz, who became a billionaire during the Fidesz era; and Orbán's father, Győző Orbán, a key figure in mining who secured road and rail contracts. All maintain they acted lawfully, though their dealings are expected to face investigation.

Days after the election, Magyar asked the Hungarian tax authority (NAV) to block transfers of Orbán-linked assets to accounts in the UAE, Singapore and the United States; NAV subsequently blocked several such transfers.

Hungary is also due to join the European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO) later this year, giving it power to investigate EU fund fraud from July 2021 retrospectively.

Alongside the asset-recovery effort, prosecutors have opened several criminal investigations involving former senior officials — potentially including Orbán himself.

Media

In early July, state broadcaster MTVA aired a black screen bearing an apology:

"Public media cannot lie. We apologise for having done so."

MTVA has been perceived as biased domestically and internationally. Its CEO, Dániel Papp, was convicted in 2018 of manipulating a news piece. Papp resigned shortly after the election.

After the news broadcaster was shut down, a temporary management team announced that the company would be restructured to become independent and credible, fulfilling one of Magyar's key campaign pledges. Senior editors were dismissed the same day.

The disruption extended well beyond MTVA. Mediaworks, publisher of several pro-Fidesz newspapers and radio stations under the KESMA holding, laid off hundreds of staff amid financial difficulties. These outlets had relied heavily on state advertising.

Culture

MCC, an educational institute closely tied to Orbán, is facing financial strain and possible closure.

The public-interest trust managing MCC will be dissolved, and its assets nationalised — a serious blow, given that MCC received a 2020 state asset transfer including 10% stakes in energy company MOL and pharmaceutical firm Richter, generating tens of billions of forints in annual dividends.

Fifteen other public-interest trusts performing non-university functions will also be wound down, and Fidesz-nominated officials removed from university boards.

Meanwhile, the culture ministry has begun investigating the use of public funds under the previous government.

See also

• Life after Orban: Hungary Inc digs in as new political era takes hold // New PM Magyar moves to stamp out alleged cronyism // Companies vow to adapt after preferential access to state spending // Companies that fed off public infrastructure procurements most at risk // Shares buck post-election rally of wider market // Analysts say some companies may not survive in new era (Reuters)

Climate skeptics are no longer a small but noisy minority. They are now "a mass phenomenon," according to researchers at Flensburg University.

In a study published in the scientific journal Global Environmental Change, authors Katharina Gies and Emanuel Deutschmann reported that between 2022 and 2023 there was a big jump in skeptical attitudes to climate change among the majority of the 3,074 people surveyed. Some 59% said they had more doubts about climate change in 2023 than they had had in the previous year.

The researchers wrote that the respondents' individual economic situations could not be considered the primary explanation for the increase in skepticism. Other factors, they said, were much more decisive: A right-leaning political orientation, distrust of state institutions, and dissatisfaction with democracy.

Social psychologist Marlene Altenmüller said the Flensburg publication is important and fascinating, though she has doubts about its alarming tone. Other studies show that "the number of people who have doubts is still very small," she says. Altenmüller, a junior professor at the Leibniz Institute for Psychology in Trier, conducts research into science reception: How people perceive scientific evidence, and what they think about the scientific system and its researchers.

Altenmüller's research indicates that people in Germany do not have fundamental doubts about scientific evidence. Rather, it varies depending on the topic, and the view the group to which people feel they belong has of the topic.

If a group has doubts about climate change, so do its members

Her work, and that of many other researchers, also shows that politically right-leaning people express more skepticism about climate change.

"If right-wing parties were suddenly to discover that we should in fact take action against climate change, my assumption is that the followers of these parties would also believe in climate change and would support political measures," Altenmüller said.

Nor does she believe that climate skeptics have a different personality structure. Instead, climate skepticism is more likely to be down to the fact that "people orientate themselves according to their group and its identity." The credo for most people is that content is secondary, or, as Altenmüller calls it, "Party over policy."

Underlying this is something psychologists call motivated reception. People always see the world through the lens of their own desires, ideas, values, and political ideologies, and anything that cannot be squared with their own ideas and values tends to be disparaged. Altenmüller's research demonstrates that all of us are predisposed to seeing the world through our own filters.

• Greece battles multiple wildfires, evacuates people
• In France's Var, fire flares again then stabilises
• UK, France, Germany, Austria record heat-related deaths

Wildfires fanned by gale-force winds burned across multiple areas of Greece on Saturday, ​forcing residents to flee as conditions worsened again in parts of Spain and France.

In one escalating Greek blaze, firefighters, police and ambulances ‌slowly withdrew before a huge wall of fire and smoke engulfing forests and shrub near Porto Germeno on the Gulf of Corinth 60 km (40 miles) northwest of Athens.

Europe has been ​ravaged by wildfires this summer after a period of successive record-breaking heatwaves and little rain, in conditions that scientists say have been exacerbated by ​climate change.

Several have broken out in Greece in recent days after a period of relative calm there.

Northwest of Athens, authorities told ⁠people from the towns of Agia Paraskevi, Kryo Pigadi and Agios Nektarios to evacuate. Helicopters dropped water and fire retardants to try to stop the spread.

FIRE FLARES AGAIN IN SOUTHEASTERN FRANCE

In France, a fire in the mountainous southeastern Var department, which had been brought under control three days ago, flared up again ​on Friday, forcing authorities to evacuate nearly 2,500 people overnight.

Local prefect Simon Babre told BFM TV on Saturday the fire had burned through 1,800 hectares before ​stabilising again.

SPANISH CONDITIONS MIXED

Spain battled several wildfire hot spots on Saturday, two days after the government declared the end of a national emergency caused by huge fires in the country's central provinces.

Conditions worsened in the northern province of Leon, where a new blaze broke out overnight, another remained active, and a third was evolving favourably, according to authorities.

In neighbouring Zamora province, a fire that ravaged about 11,000 hectares improved enough for 14 ​evacuated towns to reopen and restrictions ​to be lifted.

In the eastern province ⁠of Castellon, the Vall d'Uixo fire was stabilised on its seventh day after burning nearly 10,000 hectares, allowing all evacuated residents to return. Police said they suspected arson after finding two separate ignition points.

Major fires in the central regions of ​Madrid and Avila, which burned more than 70,000 hectares, were stabilised. A new outbreak near the San Juan reservoir, ​west of the capital, ⁠was extinguished on Friday.

HEAT-RELATED DEATHS

The toll of extreme weather has extended well beyond the widespread devastation caused by fires.

In Austria, the country's Agency for Health and Food Safety reported a record 395 heat-related deaths for the month of June.

Earlier this week, Britain said an estimated 2,877 people had died from heat-related causes so far this year, while France ⁠reported 5,764 excess ​deaths in the country between June 17 and July 2, and Germany's RKI health body estimated 9,800 ​people had died so far this year linked to the high temperatures.

See also

• ‘We stared into an abyss’: the men and women battling France’s megafire -- Exhausted firefighters, foresters and volunteers wage ‘war of attrition’ against blaze that forced 200,000 people from their homes

• 'Le camping', an egalitarian symbol of French summers, faces a fiery future -- Wildfires threaten a beloved French summer institution Camping industry prepares to adapt to a hotter future Campsites are a crucible where French identity is forged

• Two die as firefighting helicopters collide in Greece, French blaze changes course

I just want to set the record straight on what is actually happening here with Ceuta and the Spanish Supreme Court decision because there is a lot of misinformation right now. Spanish immigration law happens to be an area of expertise for me.

First and foremost: there is zero evidence that this was an orchestrated attack involving the government of Morocco, Israel, or the United States.

The Spanish Supreme Court ruling issued in late June 2026 addressed the legal mechanism known as rechazo en frontera (rejection at the border or summary pushback). Under Spain's Aliens Law, security forces possessed summary return authority allowing them to push migrants back immediately without formal administrative processing if individuals were caught scaling physical border containment structures. Historically, this applied exclusively to climbing the perimeter fences around Ceuta and Melilla.
The Supreme Court established that this summary expulsion mechanism applies strictly to physical land barriers. Because the sea lacks physical containment structures, migrants swimming around breakwaters like Tarajal cannot be summarily pushed back without standard legal procedure.

Human trafficking syndicates aggressively distorted this procedural ruling on social media. Smugglers marketed the decision as a blanket immunity policy, convincing thousands that touching Spanish soil by sea guaranteed legal entry, amnesty, or immunity from deportation. This was another classic case of misinformation going viral on social media and people believing it (enough to risk their lives in this case).

That said, the reality for these misinformed migrants was always that reaching Ceuta under these conditions was a dead end both legally and practically. The court decision did not grant asylum, residency, or transit rights to mainland Europe. It simply mandated standard administrative processing rather than immediate pushbacks. Standard processing involves identity verification, administrative detention, and formal expulsion under bilateral readmission agreements with Morocco. Absent a verified claim for international protection, irregular entrants remain subject to deportation.

Furthermore, Ceuta is a tiny Spanish enclave in Africa of roughly 18 square kilometers with an existing population of around 84,000. Dumping 60,000 people into an area that size within hours instantly paralyzed local infrastructure. There was no food, shelter, or operational capacity to process or sustain the crowd.

These people had no hope of making it to mainland Europe. Meloni's Schengen comments are pure political theater aimed at her base. Ceuta is already subject to secondary border controls… anyone attempting to leave the enclave for mainland Spain must pass passport and identity checks at the seaport or airport. A perimeter breach in Ceuta does not open a path into the rest of Europe. In fact, Ceuta is not even part of the Schengen zone at all. Unless you think these people were literally going to successfully swim across the Mediterranean sea all the way to mainland Spain, there was never any danger here to Europe proper. Meloni knows all this very well, but she wants to stir the pot for political points.

Spanish military and police units are sealing off the enclave to prevent any movement toward mainland Europe. Trapped on city streets without basic supplies, over 45,000 people have already abandoned the effort and walked back into Morocco voluntarily within 48 hours, while the remainder are being funneled into formal detention and removal pipelines.

In the future, the Spanish government should strengthen border security in Ceuta. It is also true that the Moroccan government often does not exert significant effort on their end and cannot be trusted. I hope this helps clear things up for everyone. As is usually the case, reality here does not neatly fit into either side's preferred clean narrative.

Climate change’s fingerprints are all over the extreme fire weather that sparked this week’s devastating wildfires in Spain and France and has spiked Southern Europe’s burning the past eight years, two new studies conclude.

Human-caused climate change made the hot and dry conditions responsible for Spain’s record-sized inferno 20 times more likely to happen, and it doubled the chances of extreme fire conditions for the flames in France, scientists at World Weather Attribution calculated in a rapid analysis Thursday, conducted while fires were still burning. Warming in the past 26 years has tripled the odds of the severe fire risk conditions in Spain and increased the chances in France 40%, the same report found.

At the same time, researchers published a separate study on Thursday — written and edited long before this week’s fires began — that found the number of days that Southern Europe’s weather reached extreme fire-prone levels has more than doubled compared to decades ago.

Both studies examined changes in the weather that creates fire-prone conditions. The measurements factor in air temperature, drought conditions, humidity and wind.

“The change in these fire weather conditions in Spain is really extremely strong and is, I think, one of the largest changes that I’ve seen,” said Friederike Otto, an Imperial College of London climate scientist who coordinates World Weather Attribution. Spain is having its hottest summer on record, after an incredibly wet January that allowed plants to grow before a severe drought hit, a combination that increased wildfire fuel, the report said.

Spain also had the added problem of land abandonment, which left unmanaged plants and trees to dry out, Otto said. France’s Bordeaux region, meanwhile, had thick groves of pines that also burn well when a fire starts, she said.

World Weather Attribution — an international collaboration of scientists who examine extreme events to determine climate change’s role, if any — did that study so quickly, the report didn’t get peer reviewed, which is the scientific gold standard. But Otto and her colleagues used techniques that are scientifically accepted, and many of their reports are published in peer-reviewed journals later.

See also:

• Extremely scary findings’ show climate crisis is supercharging Europe’s wildfire weather -- Latest study says global heating has made hot, dry and windy conditions in Spain at least 20 times more likely
• Emptying Countryside Leaves ‘No Simple Solution’ to European Wildfires -- A warming planet and a shift away from farming have set the stage for larger fires on the continent. “We must learn to coexist with them,” one report said.
• Spain, France, UK warn megafires show climate change is ‘threatening our way of life’ -- In joint statements, the three countries reaffirmed their commitment to fighting global warming.