Italy suspends free movement with Spain: Is Schengen in crisis after Ceuta?

On July 30, days after more than 60,000 people crossed into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta from Morocco, Italy announced it was reintroducing border controls with Spain.

Ceuta's president, Juan Jesus Vivas, told broadcaster Telecinco that between 3,000 and 5,000 migrants remain in the enclave, as the vast majority have returned. At least 72 people died in the crossing.

Because Italy and Spain do not share a land border, the measure affects people travelling between the two countries by air and sea.

"In Italy, a lot of the media coverage was saying [Italian Prime Minister Giorgia] Meloni is suspending Schengen, or that Spain should be removed from Schengen," Davide Colombi, a researcher in the Justice and Home Affairs unit at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), told Al Jazeera. "Neither of those options is actually available ... you cannot kick a country out of Schengen."

"Italy's reintroduction of border controls with Spain is nothing more than political theatre. It's a savvy manipulation of EU law to show that the government is 'tough on migration', while effectively only causing problems to tourists and other people travelling from Spain to Italy [on a Schengen visa]," said Chiara Catelli, advocacy officer at the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants (PICUM).

But Italy's move represents "the first time that a country has unilaterally reinstated Schengen border controls based on a large number of arrivals in a country with which it doesn't share internal borders," said Eleonora Testi, ECRE's senior legal officer.

What led to the deadly Ceuta crossings - Moroccan pressure, a Spanish court ruling on deportations, or Spain's regularisation policy - has been debated.