Italy is checking passports on arrivals from Spain again, and it changes how you travel
Rome reintroduced border checks on flights and ferries arriving from Spain for the whole of August. Here is who it applies to and what to carry.
If you are flying from Spain to Italy this month and you do not hold an EU passport, budget for an extra stop: Italy reintroduced border checks on Thursday for air and sea arrivals from Spain, and interior minister Matteo Piantedosi has said the measure stays in place for all of August.
The decision was announced by Giorgia Meloni alongside deputy prime ministers Antonio Tajani and Matteo Salvini, and it is Italy’s answer to the Ceuta crisis, where tens of thousands of migrants crossed from Morocco after Spain’s Supreme Court ruled that people intercepted at sea heading for Ceuta or Melilla cannot be summarily returned. Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez replied that solidarity may be optional but respect for European treaties is not.
Who do the Italian checks apply to?
The checks target third-country nationals — anyone who does not hold the nationality of an EU member state — arriving in Italy from Spain by plane or by boat. Spanish and other EU citizens are not covered and carry on as normal.
For our readers that has a very practical reading. If you live in Portugal on a residence permit but travel on a Brazilian, Angolan, Indian, Ukrainian or any other non-EU passport, yours is exactly the profile that gets checked on arrival — even though your status is entirely in order.
What should I carry with me?
Bring your passport, your valid Portuguese residence permit (the physical card, and if you are still on a paper receipt, bring the proof of application as well) and ideally some evidence of the trip, such as a hotel booking or a return ticket. None of this is legally new: even inside Schengen, third-country nationals must be able to identify themselves. What has changed is that someone is now actually going to ask.
Is this even allowed inside Schengen?
It is, and it is temporary by design. The Schengen Borders Code lets a member state reintroduce internal checks on public policy or internal security grounds, with notification to the European Commission and for limited periods. Several countries have leaned on that mechanism in recent years. The rules and the notifications currently in force are published on the European Commission’s page on temporary reintroduction of internal border control.
It is worth reading this alongside what is already coming: the EU’s new Entry/Exit System, the EES, will biometrically register every third-country traveller at the external borders. Spain, meanwhile, is still dealing with the fallout from the largest migrant crossing Ceuta has ever seen, which is what set all of this in motion.
Image: Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
