Grande-Marlaska travels to Mauritania and Senegal to strengthen migration cooperation

The acting Minister for Home Affairs, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, will travel to Mauritania this Wednesday, together with the Vice-President of the European Commission, Margaritis Schinas, to meet with the country's President, Mohamed Ould Ghazouani. Grande-Marlaska will also visit Senegal, where he will meet with the country's authorities on 16 October.

Grande-Marlaska made this announcement on Monday in Brussels during his speech to the European Parliament's Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE), where he appeared to report on the priorities of the Spanish presidency in the area of home affairs.

Together with my African colleagues I will address the current situation of migration routes in the Atlantic and we will have the opportunity to deepen issues of common interest to promote cooperation with the EU," said the minister, who has already made four official visits to Mauritania and two to Senegal since 2018.

Grande-Marlaska highlighted the external dimension of migration policy as one of the objectives of the Spanish presidency, with the aim of promoting cooperation with the countries of origin and transit of migration "in the fight against the mafia gangs that traffic in people".

In his words, the EU must continue working on prevention at source "to avoid the long crossings of people who risk their lives at sea with consequences that nobody wants", highlighting the "good results" that this policy of institutional cooperation has brought Spain over the last five years.

Satisfaction at the unblocking of the Migration Pact

Grande-Marlaska has expressed his "enormous satisfaction" at the culmination, on 4 October, of the negotiations on the Crisis Regulation, one of the priority objectives of the Spanish Presidency. "It is an essential and unavoidable step for the EU to provide itself with an effective legal framework for migration management," he said.

The minister thanked "the dialogue, the willingness to reach consensus and the flexibility" of the member states "to put aside differences and focus on what unites us". He also mentioned the "leadership" of the Commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson, and the "magnificent work" of the Spanish negotiating team, "which has raced against the clock to clear up in record time a pact that was languishing just a few weeks ago".

Non official translation