The Supreme Court bursts into the migratory debate

BarcelonaAs if the Spanish government didn't have enough open fronts with the justice system, another unexpected one has now opened in the administrative chamber of the Supreme Court against the extraordinary regularization of immigrants, which ends this very 30th and has already exceeded one million applications. The Supreme Court, responding to the appeals filed by the Valencian and Aragonese governments, both from the PP, now questions the legality of the regularization based on European regulations. This new judicial blow to the Sánchez government is signed by Carlos Lesmes, a conservative magistrate who was president of the CGPJ and the TS for 5 years; Wenceslao Olea, who was a member of the CGPJ at the proposal of the PP, and Fernando Román García, who was Secretary of State for Justice under Mariano Rajoy.

Well, the Supreme Court asks the parties (the Valencian and Aragonese governments and the State Attorney's Office) to argue whether they consider that the regularization should be brought before the CJEU for it to rule on its legality. And how does it argue this? Well, far from entering into technical disquisitions, what it does is ask itself whether, within the framework of the Immigration and Asylum Pact approved by the EU in 2024, focused exclusively on the asylum application procedure and the acceleration of repatriations, "is it admissible that those who are in an irregular situation in Spain do not submit to a return order, [...] but rather are recognized a temporary right of residence in general and for the mere fact of irregular stay in Spain".

The magistrates perform a triple somersault and consider that, since European migratory policy has been hardening in recent years, the regularization promoted by the Spanish government breaks the "solidarity, transparency, and mutual trust" between states because it has made a decision that has a "significant impact" on the entire Union. But of course, the fact that the Union has been taking measures to accelerate deportations does not mean that it has expressly prohibited states from carrying out extraordinary regularizations. In fact, the European Commission already stated at the time that the Spanish government's decision, regardless of whether they liked it a lot or a little, was perfectly legal. Because if the states had decided to prohibit regularizations, they would first have had to put it in black and white in European legislation. And then each state would have had to transpose the rule. And in this case, neither one nor the other has happened.

It is evident that regularization does not please the majority of European states, and they made it known to Sánchez at the last European Council, but in no case has there been a debate in Europe about its legality until the Spanish Supreme Court has ruled. Everything points, therefore, to this being a new maneuver by the judiciary to torpedo the decisions of a government they perceive as hostile, without considering the effects that an eventual suspension of the norm would have for hundreds of thousands of people who have placed all their hopes in a regularization process defended by both employers and unions.