{"id":9771,"date":"2026-04-22T15:42:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T15:42:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/9771\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T15:42:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T15:42:13","slug":"right-wing-candidate-in-the-french-presidential-election-calls-for-spain-to-be-sidelined-and-for-border-controls-to-be-reinstated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/9771\/","title":{"rendered":"Right-wing candidate in the French presidential election calls for Spain to be \u2018sidelined\u2019 and for border controls to be reinstated"},"content":{"rendered":"

The European Commission has reiterated that the extraordinary regularisation of migrants<\/a> launched by the Spanish government is a matter of exclusive national competence, although it noted that the Member State carrying it out must also ensure that it does not have a negative impact on the rest of the European Union<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cDecisions and policies aimed at regularising the status of third-country nationals in an irregular situation fall within the responsibility of the Member States. That said, Member States must ensure that these decisions do not affect the proper application of the European Union\u2019s asylum and migration regime,\u201d stated the EU spokesperson on migration, Markus Lammert.<\/p>\n

In doing so, the spokesperson echoed the words of the Commissioner for Home Affairs, Magnus Brunner, during a debate on the Spanish case last February in the European Parliament, when the Austrian politician explained that regularisation grants a residence permit which does not confer freedom of movement throughout the Union; therefore, if one of these regularised persons settles in another Member State, they must be returned to the country where the permit was granted, in this case, Spain<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In any case, he added, this is a matter governed by the Return Directive and by EU law on asylum policy. The spokesperson thus maintained that Brussels\u2019 position has not changed regarding the regularisation scheme launched by Pedro S\u00e1nchez\u2019s government, thereby avoiding answering the question of what the European Commission\u2019s assessment is of the statements made by Bruno Retailleau, the candidate of the French conservative party Les R\u00e9publicains for next year\u2019s presidential election, calling for Spain to be \u201cmarginalised\u201d and for border controls<\/a> to be reinstated.<\/p>\n

In an interview with the LCI channel broadcast on Monday evening, Retailleau, who served as French Minister of the Interior between September 2024 and October 2025, advocated \u201csidelining\u201d Spain from the rest of the EU countries and \u201creinstating border controls\u201d to prevent those benefiting from the regularisation scheme from crossing into France<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The candidate for the 2027 presidential election acknowledged that France has already been systematically applying border controls since 2015 \u2013 despite this being a measure that Schengen rules only permit on a temporary basis \u2013 but he advocated for the permanent reintroduction of these controls in response to Spain\u2019s migration policy. \u201cWe cannot tolerate mass regularisation as carried out by Mr S\u00e1nchez. It goes against the European spirit,\u201d argued the Les R\u00e9publicains candidate in his interview with the LCI channel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The European Commission has reiterated that the extraordinary regularisation of migrants launched by the Spanish government is a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9772,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[6214,1254,2000,333,4058,556,6213,605,599,600,3593,6215,17],"class_list":{"0":"post-9771","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-spain","8":"tag-asylum-seekers","9":"tag-balearics","10":"tag-border-controls","11":"tag-european-union","12":"tag-far-right","13":"tag-france","14":"tag-illegal-immigrants","15":"tag-latest-headlines","16":"tag-majorca","17":"tag-mallorca","18":"tag-migrants","19":"tag-small-boats","20":"tag-spain"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9771\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}