Kõlvart calls temporary border controls necessary over Ceuta crisis

Estonia must respond to the migration crisis in Ceuta based on reality rather than slogans, Center Party leader Mihhail Kõlvart said, according to ERR. He described the temporary restoration of border controls as a necessary and justified step.

Kõlvart said the situation involving Spain showed how a crisis could emerge from just a few political decisions. He cited the Spanish government’s decision to legalise hundreds of thousands of illegal border crossers and a Supreme Court ruling that people arriving by sea could not be immediately returned.

According to Kõlvart, the two decisions created a situation in which tens of thousands of people entered Europe within a single day. He said it was possible to speculate about how much of this was unintended and to what extent outside actors had deliberately contributed, but the example showed how easily such a crisis could emerge and escalate.

Kõlvart also said the events were a reminder that, in a crisis, each country first looks after itself. He pointed to Italy prioritising its own security and temporarily suspending the Schengen agreement with Spain.

“The Estonian state must also primarily proceed from its own interests and prioritise its security,” Kõlvart said. He criticised Prime Minister Kristen Michal’s statement that the free movement of people in Europe was an absolute priority and that temporarily restoring border controls was not in Estonia’s interests.

Kõlvart called that position a slogan that did not take reality into account. He said free movement could not outweigh the security threats Europe currently faced, and argued that Michal’s comments about holding those organising the migration accountable were only words.

He said Estonia was not prepared for a similar migration crisis and that even one on a scale ten times smaller would be a catastrophe for the country.

Kõlvart said Estonia should help Spain, but Spain itself needed to take appropriate steps to resolve the crisis and prevent it from happening again. He added that the problem could not be allowed to spread across Europe while assistance was being provided.

Although authorities are actively working to resolve the situation and most of the migrants who arrived so far have left, Kõlvart said there needed to be confidence that the solution would hold and would not be followed by new migration waves and attempts to cross the border. Until then, he said, temporarily restoring border controls was necessary and justified.