Europe saw one of the most striking scenes in its recent migration story 35 years ago.

On 8 August 1991, the Vlora, an old Albanian cargo ship, reached the Italian harbour of Bari carrying thousands of individuals packed onto nearly every surface.

They had travelled across the Adriatic from a nation emerging from nearly five decades of one of Europe’s most secluded communist regimes. For many Albanians, Italy - glimpsed via television long before it was physically accessible - stood for liberty, wealth and, most of all, opportunity.

Italy was not ready for an influx of that scale.

Europe lacked Frontex, any Migration Pact and anything like today’s shared asylum structure.

Yet in the turmoil, Bari’s Christian democratic mayor, Enrico Dalfino, is said to have spoken words that would outlast the crisis: “They are people, desperate people. They cannot be sent back; we are their only hope.”

Thirty-five years later, those words feel almost alien in Europe’s migration discussion.

Not because Europe has grown less compassionate. Nor because the EU must drop control of its outer borders. A political community unable to determine who enters its space will eventually forfeit both public trust and the ability to provide real protection to those who truly require it.

Yet something else has altered.

Europe has grown remarkably more advanced in handling migration. At the same time, its political language has come to frame migration mostly through borders, returns, onward movements and security.

The issue is whether, along the path, Europe has improved at noticing the border and declined at noticing the individual before it.

Ceuta challenges the new Europe

That issue feels especially pointed this August.

The remarkable arrival of 72,000 migrants into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta from Morocco has again highlighted how fast migration can reopen political rifts inside the European Union. At least 141 people perished in the events, while most who entered Ceuta have since gone back to Morocco.

The political response has spread well beyond Ceuta.

Italy briefly restored checks on air and sea links from Spain, pointing to national security issues. Other governments urged a stricter European stance. German chancellor Friedrich Merz called for Morocco to “take back illegal migrants immediately”. Spain, in turn, charged some European partners with acting from bias rather than unity.

The European Commission has resisted calls to suspend Spain from Schengen. It has also underlined that no further movement from Ceuta toward mainland Spain or other EU states was observed.

These points count.

But so does the pace at which the European talk shifted from a humanitarian crisis in a small North African area to the strength of Schengen and the chance of migrants heading deeper into Europe.

That reflex did not appear from nothing.

It shows a change in European migration policy that has unfolded over years and that, in 2026, has hit a key point.

'Firm and fair' Europe

On 12 June, less than two months before the Ceuta events, the EU’s Pact on Migration and Asylum finally began to apply.

The set includes ten legal acts and marks the biggest update to the European asylum system in years. It brings common screening and registration steps for irregular arrivals, quicker asylum and return processes, clearer rules on responsibility among member states and a lasting solidarity tool for nations facing migratory strain.

The EU commission terms the new method “firm and fair”.

Its first European Asylum and Migration Management Strategy, shown in January, outlines three main goals for the next five years: stopping irregular migration and breaking smuggling rings; shielding those fleeing war and persecution while blocking misuse of the asylum system; and drawing talent that Europe’s economy requires.

Nothing about these goals is inherently wrong.

Europe needs working external borders. People without a legal right to stay cannot simply remain forever because returning them proves administratively hard. Smuggling rings gain from human need and must be broken up. And a common area without internal borders demands some trust in how its external border is handled.

Yet language reveals something about political focus.

The commission itself frames the new phase in European migration policy via “more assertive migration diplomacy”, tighter external-border controls and “effective returns”, together with legal mobility.

In June, the European Parliament backed the new EU returns system. It permits, under set conditions, people told to leave the EU to be sent to third countries, including via so-called “return hubs”. The law also allows detention where there is a risk of disappearance and stricter rules for those seen as a security concern.

Again, none of this means Europe has dropped basic rights. The law clearly mentions international law, non-refoulement and the ban on mass expulsions.

But the overall direction is clear.

Europe’s migration talk now centres less on how people arrive and more on how to stop them arriving; less on how they settle and more on how fast those without a right to stay can be sent back.

Perhaps this is politically unavoidable. But history should at least urge caution.

Europe once feared the Albanians too

Look again at the image of the Vlora.

It is simple, with 35 years of distance, to view it as a sign of successful migration. That would be an error.

Italy’s reaction in 1991 was far from an open-border ideal. Thousands of Albanians were held in Bari’s Stadio della Vittoria in very tough conditions. There were clashes, unrest and eventually large-scale returns.

Dalfino’s words should not be recast as a call for unchecked migration.

What differed was not necessarily the border approach.

It was the political language.

The mayor of Bari faced a huge issue of public order and administration. Yet his first response was to stress that the people at the heart of it should not vanish behind the crisis.

“They are people.”

There is another reason those words count today.

In the Italy of the early 1990s, Albanians soon became one of the most targeted migrant groups. “Albanian” came to link in parts of the public mind with illegality, crime and social trouble.

They were, in many ways, yesterday’s unwanted arrivals.

History moved differently.

Today, the Albanian community is firmly rooted in Italian society. Albanians and their descendants are workers, business owners, students and professionals. Many are Italian citizens.

And Albania itself is now in talks to join the European Union.

The difference could hardly be sharper. In July, the EU and Albania provisionally closed the first three chapters of the country’s accession talks. All 33 negotiating chapters have now been opened.

The nation from which desperate people once sailed toward Europe on an overloaded cargo ship is now discussing the terms on which it will join Europe’s political union.

That should bring some humility.

We see the arrival, never the future

When a migration crisis breaks, governments naturally see numbers.

They see reception space, asylum claims, security checks, housing, border steps and return figures. They must. Governments cannot run migration on compassion alone.

What governments cannot see is time.

They cannot know who the people crossing a border will become in ten, twenty or thirty years.

The people on the Vlora were viewed in 1991 through the lens of their arrival: desperate, poor and without papers.

Europe could not see the future neighbours, colleagues, business owners and citizens among them.

And Europe cannot see that future among those arriving today either.

This does not mean that everyone who reaches an EU border has a right to stay. They do not. Nor should recognising the humanity of migrants stop Europe from separating refugees from economic migrants, or legal entry from irregular entry.

The uncomfortable lesson of the Vlora is finer than that.

A state can uphold a border without letting the border decide the human value of the person crossing it.

This is exactly the balance Europe must now show.

Europe’s new migration policy test

The EU is right to seek a migration system that functions.

Indeed, one reason migration has grown so politically charged is that European governments spent too many years failing to persuade citizens they were managing it. A believable asylum system needs believable borders and believable returns.

But effectiveness cannot be the sole measure of the new European migration setup.

There must be another.

Can Europe make returns more workable without making indifference more normal?

Can it strengthen its external borders without viewing every arrival mainly as a security threat?

Can it form ties with third countries without shifting its moral and legal duties along with migration control?

And when the next Ceuta occurs - because there will be another Ceuta - can unity among member states move as fast as the urge to block “secondary movements”?

These are not arguments against the Migration Pact.

They are questions about what sort of political culture will carry it out.

Europe has every right to manage its borders.

But before the screening, before the border step, before the return choice and before the talk about secondary movements, there is one fact that should stay the same.

They are people.

Enrico Dalfino grasped that in Bari in 1991.

35 years later, Europe should ensure that growing better at handling migration does not make it poorer at recalling why that counts.