In the space of 24 hours, over 60,000 people from Morocco illegally crossed into the Spanish exclave of Ceuta. The events of Thursday and Friday last week exposed the central fraud of European migration policy. Brussels elites continue to act as if they’re preserving Europe’s borders while in reality encouraging their dissolution.

Just listen to European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen responding to the news that many of those who entered Ceuta on Friday have now returned to Morocco. She actually congratulated Spain for its ‘efficient and effective’ management of the crisis, praising this response as evidence of a ‘solid’ European system.

It’s incredibly disingenuous. The European Commission is dressing up a glaring example of the weakness of Europe’s border regime as a good-news story. To read its statements, you could be forgiven for thinking that von der Leyen and Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, were themselves personally directing deportations.

In truth, Spain and the EU got lucky. Many of these Moroccans (who may well have been tacitly engaged by the Moroccan government) simply decided to head home.

Besides, Ceuta’s problems are far from over. There are many on-the-ground reports claiming that as many as 5,000 migrants of mainly non-Moroccan, sub-Saharan backgrounds still remain in Ceuta. The Moroccan authorities refuse to accept the return of these non-Moroccan nationals, and Ceuta’s migrant-reception facilities have simply ‘collapsed’ under the strain. No doubt these illegal entrants will now make asylum claims in Spain.

Despite von der Leyen’s enthusiastic rhetoric, the Ceuta crisis has exposed the fundamental flaw of Europe’s migration regime. The EU is governed by a legal, political and welfare architecture that acts as an invitation to illegal migrants. For several decades, European elites have presided over a system that has allowed asylum procedures to drag on for years at a time, made returns an exception rather than the rule, and funded and maintained a vast NGO and advocacy system that literally funnels illegal migrants into Europe and ensures they stay. The lure of the EU for illegal migrants is proving irresistible.

Spain is a prime example of the problem. Sánchez’s government has recently forced through an amnesty for illegal migrants – with as many as two million forecast to apply. And the Spanish Supreme Court, following EU precedent, has recently ruled that sea borders are effectively irrelevant. It is as if Spain is actively trying to encourage a flood of people into the country and, by extension, the EU.

At the same time, Ceuta has put the Brussels elites in an awkward position. While they have presided over a Europe-wide regime that is acting as an invitation to illegal migration, the spectacle of masses of people pouring into Ceuta has forced them to speak in the language of borders and sovereignty. Sánchez described the crossing as an attack on Spain’s territorial integrity. His government deployed police, soldiers and naval personnel, erected a physical maritime barrier, accelerated asylum decisions and facilitated mass returns. Von der Leyen is now speaking of stronger physical borders, early-warning systems, faster returns and an expanded role for Frontex, the EU’s border agency.

These are measures and concepts that Europe’s pro-EU elites normally shy away from or even demonise. Yet the crisis at Ceuta was simply too embarrassing for them. Not even the European Commission is capable of presenting this mob of overwhelmingly young, male migrants as a human-rights concern. Thus, almost out of sheer embarrassment, the same elites who have spent decades downplaying illegal immigration as ‘irregular migration’ have suddenly been forced to rediscover borders, territory and sovereignty.

Of course, Europe’s political class has not really been won over to the cause of national sovereignty. The same pro-immigration legal regime and flawed border policies persist. As ever for the Eurocratic elites, they will do and say anything to survive.

Nevertheless, the Ceuta crisis has done great damage to the EU, especially to the Schengen system, its internal open-border area. Schengen only works if every EU member state trusts the immigration decisions of other EU member states. For many years, this trust has been strained – with Poland or Hungary punished by the EU for deciding to enforce their own borders during and after the 2015 migrant crisis.

In the wake of Ceuta, Schengen is under more strain than ever. Italy responded by reintroducing checks on arrivals from Spain, and other governments discussed further restrictions. This comes on top of France, Germany, Austria, Poland, the Netherlands and Sweden having recently already imposed their own internal border controls.

The European Commission has described these controls as exceptional. Yet given the exceptions are persisting and multiplying across the continent, they are increasingly looking like the norm. The belief that Schengen should apply only for EU nationals is fast becoming common sense across Europe, even though it would effectively mark the end of the Schengen system.

It seems that the EU’s tolerance for ‘exceptional’ measures to control immigration and drive back illegal entrants is rapidly increasing. The task for anyone concerned about restoring national sovereignty is to seize the opportunity and turn these exceptions into the rule.

Jacob Reynolds is head of policy at MCC Brussels.