Spain weighs 1.2 million migrant permits

Spain's Supreme Court is considering whether to send a politically loaded question to the EU's Court of Justice: can Madrid regularise more than a million undocumented migrants without first clarifying what that means for the rest of Schengen?

For Malta, this is not a distant Spanish argument. Residence permits issued in one Schengen country do not give the holder a Maltese work permit, but they do change how that person moves through the border-free zone that Malta also belongs to. The question is whether a national decision, taken in Madrid, creates consequences that Berlin, Paris, Il-Belt and every other capital must then manage.

There is one important caution. No formal order has yet appeared on Spain's judiciary website. The move has been reported by Spanish media, which say the court has questioned whether residence can be granted "for the mere fact of irregular stay" and has opened the procedural route for a possible referral to Luxembourg (El Mundo, El Español). Until that order is published, this remains a judicial signal, not a confirmed court battle.

What Spain did, and what EU law says

Spain's regularisation scheme closed on 30 June. It offered a one-year renewable residence-and-work permit to undocumented migrants who were already in the country before 1 January 2026. The government expected around 500,000 applications (RTÉ). More than 1.2 million people applied (Euronews).

EU law does not ban national regularisation outright. The Return Directive, the EU framework for dealing with people staying irregularly, treats return as the normal route. But Article 6(4) allows member states to grant residence "for compassionate, humanitarian or other reasons" instead (Return Directive 2008/115/EC).

The legal problem is scale and method. Can that exception justify a broad legislative programme covering more than a million people, or must it be applied case by case? According to El Confidencial, the Supreme Court's reported wording suggests it sees a possible clash with EU rules.

A referral under Article 267 TFEU, the treaty mechanism that lets national courts ask Luxembourg to interpret EU law, would not by itself strike down Spain's decree. It would set the legal boundaries. Once the Court of Justice answers, every court in the EU must follow that interpretation (TFEU Article 267). That is why this does not stop at Madrid.

Why Berlin and Paris are watching

A Spanish residence permit does not allow someone to take up work in Germany, France or Malta. But Schengen rules allow permit holders to travel across the border-free area for up to 90 days in any 180-day period (Regulation (EU) 2016/399). Regularisation does not export a work permit. It does change a person's legal position inside a shared travel space.

Germany sees the risk in onward movement: people regularised in Spain could enter legally for short stays, overstay, or look for informal work in a system already under pressure (Berliner Zeitung). France's interior minister, Bruno Retailleau, has gone further, accusing Pedro Sánchez of "clientelism" and pressing for Spain to be held accountable before European partners (Le Figaro).

Spain's answer is practical rather than ideological. It argues that people already working informally should pay taxes and have labour protections instead of remaining in the shadow economy (Emerging Europe). Whether such schemes encourage future irregular arrivals is still contested among researchers (Migration Policy Centre).

The questions no one is answering

The debate is full of sovereignty language and thin on evidence. There is no dataset showing how many people regularised in one Schengen country later move to another. No government criticising Spain has produced a costed and realistic return plan for the population Madrid is now documenting.

The missing voices are the most directly affected: applicants, employers who rely on their work, and local administrations processing the files. Malta knows this tension well in its own way. In a small labour market, migration policy is never only about borders; it is about construction sites, care work, hospitality, enforcement capacity and the gap between law on paper and life as it is lived.

If Spain's Supreme Court sends the question to Luxembourg, the Court of Justice will set a precedent for every member state facing the same trade-off. Spain wants to document workers already inside the country. Other governments want common limits so national decisions do not spill across borders. Until that tension is resolved, Schengen rests on an assumption that has never been tested at this scale: each country decides who gets residence, while every country absorbs part of what follows.