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Italy's Interior Ministry ordered the temporary suspension of Schengen free movement between Italy and Spain, introducing targeted and selective checks on non-EU travellers.
Because Italy shares no land border with Spain, the measure applies to air and sea travel, requiring passports on routes between the two countries.
The controls were announced for August, according to Italian Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi.
The trigger was a surge of migrants crossing from Morocco into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta after a Spanish Supreme Court ruling barred returns of migrants intercepted at sea.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez criticised the move, and Spanish officials said more than 48,000 people had voluntarily returned to Morocco.
The Schengen Area is a group of European states that have abolished routine checks at their common borders, so that a traveller may cross from one to another without passing through passport control. Membership is not identical to European Union membership: some EU states remain outside Schengen and some non-EU states are inside it. Crucially, the arrangement allows a member to reintroduce border controls temporarily where there is a serious threat to public policy or internal security, subject to notification and time limits. Such reintroductions have become recurrent in recent years, usually citing migration pressure or terrorism, which is why critics argue the exception is steadily hollowing out the rule.
Simple Analogy: It works like a group of neighbours who agree to leave the gates between their gardens open, with each retaining the right to shut its own gate temporarily if it feels threatened.
Ceuta and Melilla are Spanish territories on the North African coast, separated from the Spanish mainland by the Strait of Gibraltar and bordered by Morocco on land.
GS Paper 2 > International Relations: Effect of Policies of Developed Countries; GS Paper 1 > World Geography
General Awareness > World Geography and Current Affairs
General Awareness > International Current Affairs
A group of European states that have abolished routine checks at their mutual borders.
Spanish cities on the North African coast, the only EU territory reachable on foot from mainland Africa.
The Schengen provision permitting a member to restore checks where there is a serious threat to public policy or internal security.
The narrow waterway separating Spain from Morocco and connecting the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea.