Photo credit: Reuters
European lawmakers are set to vote this week on a resolution addressing the migrant crisis at Ceuta, the Spanish enclave in North Africa, with a section holding up in Poland’s border policies as a model for the bloc, according to a Polish MEP.
More than 70,000 people crossed into Ceuta from Morocco in late July, according to the draft resolution’s backup. Most were subsequently turned back, though the situation along that stretch of the EU’s external border has yet to stabilize.
Parliament will debate the measure Tuesday and hold a final vote Thursday. Andrzej Halicki, who leads Poland’s delegation within the chamber’s centre-right grouping, said the push for the resolution came from Polish members of the European Parliament affiliated with the centrist Civic Coalition and the agrarian Polish People’s Party.
Some lawmakers also expect the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to touch on Poland’s migration record when she delivers her State of the European Union address Wednesday, a day before the resolution comes to a vote.
The reference to Poland traces back to the country’s handling of a separate, earlier crisis: a surge of migrants pushed toward its border with Belarus by the government in Minsk. Warsaw’s response drew criticism from EU partners at first, but that changed at an October 2024 EU summit, when Prime Minister Donald Tusk secured backing from the European Commission and fellow leaders for a temporary suspension of asylum applications along that border – restricting asylum rights for people who crossed it illegally and by force.
Halicki said that record is now shaping how other EU governments view Poland’s approach.
