Spain emerges as EU’s new weak link for Africa migration

TARIFA, Spain/RABAT/BRUSSELS: Spain has become the new main entry point for asylum-seekers fleeing Africa, an influx that European Union officials fear could exacerbate political tensions across the region over migration.

Around 19,000 asylum-seekers arrived in Spain in the first five months of this year, almost as many as arrived there in all of 2017, a record year, and eclipsing for the first time the numbers flowing through north Africa to Italy.

The surge has intensified in recent weeks as Italy’s new government shut its ports to most asylum-seekers, rescue officials say.

With the EU strugglingto contain dissent over migration policy, some officials in Brussels say they worry that Spain could become a new flash-point, even as overall numbers of arrivals into Europe from Africa are in sharp decline.

"We must not let it blow up," an EU diplomat said. He said the Morocco-Spain route had been kept under control for years.