Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has been confronted by several European Union leaders over his Government’s mass regularisation of undocumented immigrants, after he used a closed-door summit to attack the bloc’s newly approved deportation centres.
Between three and four heads of state and government took the floor to challenge him during the first session of the European Council in Brussels on June 18. The exchange came a day after the European Parliament had backed the EU’s toughest immigration overhaul in decades.
Among the critics were Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever, both right-wing, as well as Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, a Social Democrat, the sources said. Their complaint was that Madrid had pressed ahead with a regularisation of that scale without consulting other member states.
One leader reportedly warned Sánchez that granting papers to at least 500,000 people in Spain meant the same number of additional immigrants free to move around Europe. He said he would have expected to be informed before such a step was taken.
The clash followed an address to leaders by European Parliament President Roberta Metsola, whose institution had on June 17 approved the Return Regulation by 418 votes to 218. The law allows member states to set up so-called return hubs, or deportation centres, in countries outside the bloc.
Sánchez has openly opposed that approach, which runs counter to the migration policy of his left-wing Government. Madrid defends an open Europe in which migration drives economic growth, and insists it applies the EU’s Pact on Migration and Asylum in full.
In late January the Spanish Government approved a decree to regularise around 500,000 undocumented immigrants, a measure sharply at odds with the harder line taken across much of the continent.
The Commission has warned for months that newly legalised immigrants could move on to other countries through the Schengen area. EU Migration Commissioner Magnus Brunner told the European Parliament in February that a residence permit “is not a blank cheque” for free movement across the Union.
Sánchez argued that many of those covered by the scheme are of Latin American origin with linguistic ties to Spain, so few would be likely to settle elsewhere in Europe.
