Migration research shows Morocco acts as EU migration buffer with over 19,000 crossings to Spain in 2025

A recent report by Migrapress, an online platform specializing in migration issues in Morocco, highlighted the kingdom’s strategic role in Europe’s migration control.

Citing Frontex data for 2025, the report noted that irregular migration through the Western Mediterranean, mainly via Morocco to Spain, rose 14% in 2025 to 19,403 crossings while most other EU routes dropped sharply, including West Africa with a 63% drop and the Western Balkans with a 42 % decline. 

The rise in the Western Mediterranean signals a shift of migratory pressure toward the Morocco–Spain corridor, driven by stricter controls on other routes.

Morocco now “acts as a buffer, concentrating Sub-Saharan migrants, migrants from countries in crisis, and increasingly Moroccan migrants themselves who are now among the main nationalities on the Western route.”

It emphasized that the sharp drop from West Africa and the relative stability on other routes reflect stronger EU-Morocco security cooperation through monitoring, interceptions, and early-stage deterrence.

The report also stressed that while the numbers show effective control, they do not reflect the human, social, and political costs, such as prolonged migrant immobilization, pressures on northern Moroccan areas, local tensions, and rising precarity. 

It additionally said that Frontex data reveal a structural contradiction, with Morocco both a central player in Europe’s border control system and a country weakened by the externalization of these controls.

Rising departures from the northern coast, combined with more blocked migrants, increase challenges for human rights, social cohesion, and migration governance.

The report concluded that “the 2025 figures confirm Morocco as a silent pillar of EU migration policy, performing a control role whose human and social costs remain largely externalized and politically underexamined.”