Spain's Supreme Court Reviews Regional Lawsuit Over Immigrant Regularization

The Spanish Supreme Court has admitted a contentious‑administrative appeal filed by the Junta of Castilla‑y‑León against the government's extraordinary regularisation decree for undocumented immigrants. The regional government argues that the measure has an "unprecedented" scale, that it altered criteria used in earlier regularisations, that it relaxed documentation requirements, and that autonomous communities were excluded from its design despite being responsible for health, education and social services. The court had previously rejected a request for a precautionary suspension of the decree from another region and is now examining the merits of the case, with the possibility of referring a preliminary question to the Court of Justice of the European Union.

Legal experts note that a referral to the EU Court could create uncertainty for the more than 1.3 million migrants expected to benefit from the scheme. As one commentator put it, "the noise it has generated fills with fear over 1,300,000 people who are about to regularise their status in our country." Others argue that the issue is primarily a matter of Spanish constitutional and administrative law, not EU law, and that the European Commission has already stated that such regularisations are within the competence of member states.