Italy added seven days to its checks on 16 October, bringing their expiry into line with Spain’s measures, due to end on 22 October. Interior ministers from both countries are to work in the coming days towards ending the controls.
The extension followed talks between Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in Brussels on 16 October. At the Brussels summit, Meloni also joined a migration breakfast attended by about twenty EU governments calling for tougher policies.
Italy introduced the checks on 1 August 2026, after nearly 90,000 irregular migrants arrived in the Spanish exclave of Ceuta on 30 and 31 July, information from Euronews. Italy said the measure was needed for security reasons. Rome first imposed the controls for a month, then extended them three times by 15 days. Spain responded with selective checks on passengers arriving from Italy, saying Italy’s measures were unjustified.
The aligned dates give ministers a window to agree on removing the checks, but the extension does not end them. Spain and Italy have no shared land border, so the checks apply to passengers travelling between them through airports and seaports. European Commission notifications list both countries’ measures as applying to internal air and sea borders. Italy’s interior minister said almost 500,000 people were checked during the first month. On affected routes, the measures interrupt the usual Schengen arrangement for free movement.
Rome has also said the two governments will assess alternative forms of cooperation, without clarifying whether another kind of control could follow. The European Commission has urged countries with recurring temporary checks, including Germany and Austria, to strengthen joint police work for non-systematic checks. It made a similar proposal to France. The Commission has also called for more information-sharing and wider use of technology such as mobile biometric identification systems.
The planned removal will leave Sánchez and Meloni’s wider disagreement over migration unresolved. At the summit, a group of member states is pushing for a tougher EU approach. RUSSPAIN has separately covered the government’s Catalonia amnesty policy in an earlier report.
EU leaders have reserved migration for their Friday lunch. The final text could be reopened to include calls for a harder line. Some governments are already negotiating to open deportation centres in third countries as soon as possible. Spain opposes the proposal.
