Spain’s 1.17 million residency cases head to court

Spain has done something most EU governments talk around but rarely attempt. Before the window closed in late June, more than 1.17 million people applied to regularise their immigration status, more than twice what Madrid had expected (Crónica Global, The Guardian). It is the biggest labour regularisation effort attempted by an EU member state in years.

That is why the case now moving through Spain's Supreme Court matters beyond Spain. The court is considering whether to ask the Court of Justice of the EU, the bloc's highest court, to decide whether the programme fits within EU law (El Español). If Luxembourg takes the case, its answer will bind every member state, including Ireland, and define how much room governments have to legalise irregular workers while others are building their politics around tougher removals.

One clause, two readings

The fight turns on one clause in the EU's Return Directive, the 2008 law that sets common rules for removing people without legal status. Article 6(1) says governments "shall issue a return decision" to anyone staying irregularly. Article 6(4) then allows a member state to grant residence for "compassionate, humanitarian or other reasons" and avoid issuing that removal order. The Commission's own Return Handbook says a country "may at any moment" grant a residence permit to someone staying irregularly (Directive 2008/115/EC, Commission Return Handbook).

Madrid says that gives it clear legal space. Its opponents say Article 6(4) was meant as a safety valve for individual cases, not a legal basis for bringing more than a million people into status at once. If the Supreme Court makes a preliminary reference, the mechanism by which a national court asks the CJEU to interpret EU law, the ruling will set the limits of that clause for every capital in the Union (El Debate).

Europe reads the same story through different fears

Germany largely treated Spain's move as a labour-market story. The focus was on workers already in the shadow economy, in construction, agriculture and domestic care, being brought into taxable and insured employment (taz).

German coverage also drew a careful distinction that will matter in any Irish debate about the case. A Spanish residence card does not open the German, Austrian or Irish labour market. Under Schengen rules, it allows short-stay travel of up to 90 days elsewhere in the border-free zone, but not the right to work in another member state (FAZ, Schengen Convention, Art. 21). Austria would not immediately have to admit these workers into its labour market.

Austria's FPÖ, the far-right Freedom Party now leading the coalition, chose a different reading, calling the scheme a "Schengen free ticket" and an "asylum magnet" (Krone). That framing folds together pull factors, onward movement and the credibility of returns into one warning. The legal basis is much thinner. Fuller mobility rights come only after years of continuous residence under the EU's long-term residence directive, not from a first one-year Spanish permit.

Italy has folded Spain into its own enforcement argument. Interior Minister Piantedosi has presented the EU's Migration and Asylum Pact, the 2024 package overhauling asylum processing and returns, as a move towards stricter control (Avvenire). From Rome, Spain looks like the opposite model.

Catalonia carries the administrative weight

The pressure is falling most heavily on Catalonia. The region received more than 257,000 applications, the highest total of any autonomous community, with Barcelona province alone accounting for more than 192,000 (Crónica Global). Lawyers in Barcelona say the immediate danger is not the legal theory but the shortage of appointments at immigration offices.

Portugal offers the warning. Its own regularisation drive brought hundreds of thousands of people into the formal system, but backlogs left many without valid documents for months. According to ECO, more than 162,000 foreign workers fell off social-security rolls in 2025 without returning to active registration. Regularisation can turn real work into legal work, but only if the state can process applications quickly enough to avoid creating a new limbo.

The legal question for the CJEU would be narrow: does Article 6(4) allow mass regularisation, or only case-by-case exceptions? The political question is wider. Spain is testing whether a large EU state can legalise irregular labour at scale while its neighbours spend political capital on removals. The first answer may come from judges. The first failure, if there is one, will appear in the queues outside immigration offices.