Spain’s 1.17 million residency test

More than 1.17 million people applied to regularise their immigration status in Spain before the window closed in late June, more than twice what the government first expected (Crónica Global, The Guardian). No EU country has tried to bring irregular workers into legal employment on this scale for years. The Spanish Supreme Court is now weighing whether to ask the Court of Justice of the EU, the bloc’s top court, to decide whether the scheme fits within EU law (El Español).

For Malta, the case is not distant. Small states live with EU migration rules at close range: in the labour market, in border politics, and in the constant argument over who gets to decide status. If Luxembourg judges take the case, their answer will bind every member state. It will also define how far a government can go in legalising irregular workers while others build their politics around removals.

One clause, two readings

The dispute turns on one provision in the EU’s Return Directive, the 2008 law that sets common rules for removing people who have no legal right to stay. 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 the removal order. The Commission’s own Return Handbook says a country "may at any moment" grant a residence permit to an irregularly staying person (Directive 2008/115/EC, Commission Return Handbook).

Madrid reads that as enough legal room. Its opponents say Article 6(4) was designed for individual cases, not for more than a million people at once. If the Supreme Court sends a preliminary reference, the procedure by which a national court asks the CJEU to interpret EU law, the ruling will set the limits of that clause for all 27 member states (El Debate).

Europe reads the same story through different fears

Germany has treated the programme mainly as a labour-market story. Coverage focused on Spain’s attempt to bring workers in construction, agriculture and domestic care out of the shadow economy and into taxable, insured employment (taz).

German reporting also drew a line that matters legally. A Spanish residence card allows short-stay travel of up to 90 days elsewhere in the Schengen area, but it does not open another country’s labour market (FAZ, Schengen Convention, Art. 21). Austria would not immediately have to let these workers take jobs.

Austria’s FPÖ, the far-right Freedom Party now leading the coalition, reached the opposite political conclusion anyway. It called Spain’s scheme a "Schengen free ticket" and an "asylum magnet" (Krone). The slogan folds pull factors, onward movement and weak returns into one warning. The legal exposure is much narrower: 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 read Spain through its own enforcement debate. Interior Minister Piantedosi has presented the EU’s Migration and Asylum Pact, the 2024 package reshaping asylum and returns, as a move towards tougher enforcement (Avvenire). From Rome, Spain looks like the counter-model.

Catalonia carries the administrative weight

The pressure is heaviest in Catalonia. The region received more than 257,000 applications, more than any other autonomous community, with Barcelona province alone accounting for over 192,000 (Crónica Global). Lawyers in Barcelona say the main risk is not the law on paper, but the shortage of appointments at immigration offices.

Malta knows the difference between a policy announcement and a working state system. A right that cannot be processed becomes another queue, another file, another person stuck in limbo. Portugal offers the warning sign. Its own regularisation drive formalised hundreds of thousands of people, but backlogs left many without valid documents for months. According to ECO, more than 162,000 foreign workers dropped off social-security rolls in 2025 without returning to active registration.

Regularisation can bring real work into the open. It can also fail if the state cannot turn applications into usable status quickly enough. In a Maltese context, that distinction is familiar: the measure that looks clean in Brussels often lands messily at the counter.

The legal question before 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 member 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 it comes, will appear in appointment queues.