Spain’s Supreme Court is considering referring the country’s controversial mass migrant regularisation to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) amid concerns that it could conflict with EU law.
Two regional governments in Spain have appealed the Socialist government’s migrant amnesty scheme, meaning the measure could be passed up the legal chain to the European courts to tests its compatibility with bloc-wide legislation.
The mass regularisation, approved by royal decree in April, will grant one-year residency and work permits to applicants who spent a minimum of five months living in Spain before January 1st and can prove they don’t have a criminal record.
The application deadline passed on Tuesday June 30th. The total number of applications will almost certainly double initial projections, which is between 300,000 and 400,000 higher than it was on June 15th, two weeks earlier, and the government now estimates between 1.2 million and 1.3 million in total.
Now Spain’s high court is considering passing the measure up the legal chain following appeals lodged by regional authorities in Valencian and Aragón against certain aspects of the amnesty.
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This comes after the court in May rejected a request for a preliminary injunction to suspend the regularisation filed by Madrid’s regional government and far-right party Vox.
In its more recent rulings, the Supreme Court notified appealing parties that they have five days to express their views on whether it is appropriate to refer to the CJEU “a preliminary ruling on the interpretation of a number of provisions of the Royal Decree which, where applicable, could conflict with EU law”.
Specifically, in two documents to which Spanish daily El País has had access, the court asks the regional governments and its respective legal teams whether they believe a preliminary ruling should be sought from the CJEU to clarify whether the Spanish regulation violates the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum adopted in 2024.
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The Supreme Court asked for views on the compatibility with the Schengen Agreement and European-level law “of a measure adopted by a Member State by means of secondary legislation provision in the context of a mass regularisation process and without any record of prior coordination in this regard with the other Member States”.
The Socialist government, for its part, on Tuesday responded by defending the legality of the regularisation, noting that “the regulation has been drafted with strict regard for its compatibility with EU law”, and reiterating that the “regularisation grants a residence and work permit valid exclusively within Spanish territory” and not residency or employment rights across the bloc, as has falsely been claimed by some opponents of the regularisation.
The Ministry is sending applicants a “message of reassurance” and sources within the Immigration Ministry note that the deadline for the preliminary ruling is Friday 3rd July.
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Once that deadline has passed, the Supreme Court will hear further legal arguments and must decide whether to refer its preliminary ruling to the CJEU, Ministry sources say.
Reporting in the Spanish press also notes that government sources are confident that no such ruling will be issued in time to halt the measure.
Online news site 20 Minutos on Wednesday morning suggests that even if the courts were to rule against it, the Spanish government believes that any ruling would come after the process has already been completed, which would make it impossible to revoke residence and work permits already granted.
“It cannot withdraw permits that have already been granted”, claim sources at the Ministry, who nevertheless acknowledged that administrative procedures will be accelerated so that all applications are processed as soon as possible.
Q&A: How Spain’s mass regularisation of undocumented migrants works
