The statements by Morocco’s Justice Minister, Abdellatif Ouahbi, on Ceuta and Melilla prompted the reaction in Madrid that one might have expected. Morocco reiterates its historical and geographical rights over the two cities and asks that their future finally be discussed. Spain replies that Ceuta and Melilla are Spanish, that they will remain so, and, moreover, that they even constitute the borders of the European Union.
That says it all.
And yet, nothing is settled.
There are questions we believe we can resolve by deciding no longer to ask them. History shows that these are generally the ones that return with the greatest force.
Ceuta and Melilla are among them.
I understand Morocco’s position, and I share it. Not out of hostility toward Spain, a friend of Morocco and an eminently respectable country, nor out of any fondness for the territorial disputes with which Mediterranean history is littered, but for an even simpler reason: Europe’s borders must be in Europe. Let everyone keep their borders at home, and all will be well.
Ceuta and Melilla are on the African continent. They are embedded in Moroccan territory and break its geographical and historical continuity. Their current belonging to Spain is the product of a long history. That history can be explained and documented; one can recall that the Spanish presence in Ceuta is centuries old, that Melilla was seized long before the establishment of the European protectorates in Morocco. All of that is true.
But the age of a situation is not enough to turn it into the natural order of things.
European history is precisely the history of countless borders once thought eternal that proved not to be.
Morocco is raising the question today, and its Justice Minister is proposing that it be discussed. Why refuse dialogue?
We should go even further.
In recent years, Spain has made a considerable shift on the Western Sahara issue by recognizing Morocco’s autonomy plan as the most serious, realistic and credible basis for a settlement. It has understood that foreign policy does not consist in perpetuating problems inherited from the past indefinitely, but in seeking solutions that make it possible to build the future.
Why should that realism stop at Ceuta and Melilla?
There is obviously no question of driving out their inhabitants, erasing their Spanish history or creating two new Mediterranean tragedies. Algeria should have taught us the price paid when a country’s independence is accompanied by the near-total exodus of a population that had lived there for several generations. More than sixty years after 1962, many Pieds-noirs still have a painful relationship with the land of their birth, and many still find it extremely difficult simply to return there freely, as one returns to visit the country of one’s childhood. Ceuta and Melilla must never experience such a rupture. Their populations exist, their rights exist, and so does their memory. Returning a territory to its geography must not mean expelling its history. Any settlement worthy of the name should begin by guaranteeing that.
«Ceuta and Melilla may remain Spanish for a long time yet. Law, power relations and history have their own inertia. But inertia is not a political solution.»
— Boualem Sansal
But sovereignty can evolve without a civilization disappearing. Europe should know this better than anyone: it was built precisely by inventing political forms capable of transcending old borders without erasing peoples.
And perhaps this is where the question of Ceuta and Melilla leads us to a much larger question.
In 1987, King Hassan II applied for Morocco to join the European Economic Community. The application was rejected: Morocco was not a European country.
The answer seemed obvious. It is much less so today.
For the same Europe that told Morocco it could not join the Community because it was African now tells us that two cities located in Africa constitute its borders.
A choice must be made.
Or rather, we must move beyond this administrative geography that defends the absurd and ignores reality.
The Strait of Gibraltar is fourteen kilometers wide at its narrowest point. Fourteen kilometers separate two continents, but they have never separated two worlds. For millennia, people, goods, armies, languages, religions and cultures have crossed it. Rome existed on both shores. Islam existed on both shores. Spain and Morocco have lived with one another, against one another, but never truly without one another.
Why not revisit today the question left unanswered in 1987?
Not to announce tomorrow that Morocco is joining the European Union. Institutions do not work that way, treaties exist, peoples must be consulted, and Morocco itself would have to decide how far it wishes to go.
But why rule out the question?
The Morocco of 2026 is no longer the Morocco of 1987. It has demonstrated its ability to administer a complex state, carry out major projects, develop world-class infrastructure, honor its commitments, maintain stability in a region sorely lacking it, and build strong relations with Europe, Africa and the world’s emerging powers. How many Eastern European countries would have managed, on their own and without the European Union’s massive assistance, to reach the level Morocco has attained relying only on itself—and in a far more dangerous environment?
Morocco is already, in practice, one of Europe’s major strategic partners and a leading player in Africa.
But there is one factor today that did not exist in 1987: the world has changed.
Indeed, it is changing at a speed that Europe, too preoccupied with its own difficulties, may not yet fully appreciate. Powers are being reshuffled, new blocs are taking shape, alliances are becoming more fluid, and continents are drawing closer in different ways. What yesterday seemed settled for the long term no longer is.
Europe remains a great power. It possesses an immense market, a civilization, considerable scientific, industrial and financial capabilities, and it remains Morocco’s natural partner by virtue of geography, history and millions of human ties. Morocco itself has never concealed its desire for an ever-closer relationship with Europe.
But reality is what it is.
A country does not wait indefinitely outside a closed door. It looks around. It trades, invests, forges alliances and opens other routes. Morocco is already doing so. Not against Europe, but because the world now offers it possibilities that the world of 1987 did not.
Europe should reflect on that.
It can regard Morocco as its southern neighbor, useful when migration must be contained, terrorism fought, the Mediterranean secured or certain supply chains guaranteed. Or it can understand that Morocco has become a strategic partner whose lasting anchoring in the European space is itself a major European interest.
These are not two different policies. They are two different visions of the world.
In the first, Europe protects its borders.
In the second, it builds its future.
And time is running short. For while we debate where Europe ends, the world is not waiting for us.
A settlement of the Ceuta and Melilla question would, moreover, have consequences extending far beyond the two cities.
It would transform Europe’s relationship with North Africa.
There is much talk of immigration, the Sahel, terrorism, trafficking and Mediterranean security. These issues are generally discussed once the problems have already reached Europe’s borders. Yet Morocco lies precisely at the intersection of all these questions: Africa, the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, Europe. Its geography is a strategic fact before it is a tourist destination.
Ceuta and Melilla themselves offer a strange demonstration of this. Europe has erected walls in Africa behind which it claims to protect itself from Africa. Then it asks Morocco to help guard those walls.
There may be a more intelligent way forward.
A Morocco more closely associated with Europe would necessarily affect the balance of power throughout North Africa. It would also have an impact on migration and on the security of a space that now stretches from the Sahel to the Mediterranean. Not because Morocco is destined to become Europe’s southern policeman—that would be yet another impoverished way of conceiving their relationship—but because no serious European strategy for this region can now be devised without it.
The same is true of the Maghreb. It remains one of the world’s great thwarted regions. The border between Morocco and Algeria is closed, regional trade is negligible, and political rivalries paralyze a region that could wield considerable influence between Europe and sub-Saharan Africa. This absurdity will not be resolved in Ceuta. But any major shift in the relationship between Morocco and Europe will necessarily alter the terms of the Maghreb equation.
That is why the issue is more important than it appears.
It comes at a time when the world is being reshaped.
Europe remains a great power. Morocco has long sought closer ties with it. But it is no longer in the position it was in 1987. Other doors now exist. Other markets, other alliances and other powers are talking to it. Morocco has no reason to choose against Europe; it has fewer and fewer reasons to wait for it.
Perhaps that is what Ceuta and Melilla reveal most clearly.
In 1987, Europe told Morocco: you are in Africa; therefore, you cannot join us.
In 2026, it tells Morocco: we are in Ceuta and Melilla; therefore, Europe is in Africa.
Between those two assertions, something no longer holds.
Ceuta and Melilla may remain Spanish for a long time yet. Law, power relations and history have their own inertia. But inertia is not a political solution.
Morocco has raised the question.
Spain has answered.
Europe, too, is now concerned.
For behind Ceuta and Melilla lies a far larger question: where does Europe place its border and, above all, where does it place its future?
Europe’s borders must be in Europe.
Morocco, meanwhile, is fourteen kilometers away.
