The EU will increase funds to Morocco for migration management up to 500 million euros

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The European Union will increase to 500 million the European funds it allocates to Morocco

until 2027, according to what community sources have informed Europa Press.

European diplomacy negotiates the priorities in the relationship with the North African country and the first budget estimates point to an increase in the planned allocation until 2027

, understanding that Morocco has become one of the key players to stop the passage of illegal migration to Europe.

These more than 500 million will go to the protection of migrants, border management and combat human trafficking, according to the sources consulted.

This allocation

, which received 346 million under the previous community budget.

For the EU,

with whom the European bloc has cooperated for several years on migration matters, recalls a community spokeswoman, who frames these new funds in the operational association against human trafficking to tackle to human trafficking, which will include measures to "support border management, enhanced police cooperation, including joint investigations, awareness of the dangers of irregular migration and

working in the field of home affairs".

The need to increase European funds

from African countries was precisely expressed by the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, at the last meeting of European ministers in the field in Prague.

"They need regular, predictable and significant support, which has been insufficient so far," he said.

political profile

The Spanish minister also asked to "raise the political profile" with greater dialogue with the countries of origin of the migration, citing as an example the visit to Rabat together with the Commissioner for the Interior, Ylva Johansson, to meet with the Moroccan authorities.

In fact,

with neighboring countries for migration management and until now it was after Libya, the second country in North Africa that benefited from more funds.

Apart from the items for migration,

and regional cooperation, in line with the special relations that Brussels maintains with the group of neighboring countries in Europe and the Mediterranean.

In recent years, the episodes of massive arrivals of migrants in Spain, several of them with Morocco at the center of the crisis, have forced Brussels to act.

In May 2021, Ceuta experienced a massive influx of more than 8,000 migrants, many minors,

, who did not try to prevent the passage, in the midst of the diplomatic crisis between Morocco and Spain.

The situation on the border once again generated concern in the community capital before the summer after the death of dozens of migrants when they tried to cross into the autonomous city of Melilla.

Before, at the end of 2020, the EU allocated additional funds

and the overcrowding that was experienced in the port of Arguineguín, in the Canary Islands, in November 2020.

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