By Sergio Goncalves and Miguel Pereira<\/p>\n
PORTO, Portugal, April 22 (Reuters) – France’s far-right National Rally would reintroduce border controls and seek to limit Europe\u2019s free\u2011movement zone \u200cto EU nationals if it came to power, its leader said on Wednesday, \u200caccusing Spain of becoming a gateway for migration into Europe.<\/p>\n
At an event organised by Patriots for Europe – the \u200bEU Parliament’s third-largest grouping – in Porto, Jordan Bardella said Spain’s upcoming mass regularisation of migrants had “considerable consequences for the larger balance of Spanish society, but also for neighbouring countries”.<\/p>\n
Last week, Madrid launched the fast\u2011track scheme to grant legal residence to undocumented migrants who can prove \u200chaving entered the country before end-2025 \u2060and spent five uninterrupted months living in Spain, a move it says could integrate up to 500,000 workers and boost the economy.<\/p>\n
“Spain under (Prime \u2060Minister Pedro) Sanchez is in the process of becoming the entry point for migratory subversion in Europe,” he told reporters in Portugal’s second-largest city.<\/p>\n
Sanchez, a Socialist, has repeatedly rejected such criticism \u200bfrom \u200bthe domestic opposition, saying the measure simply aimed \u200bto recognise the rights of people \u200cwho were already living in the country. He also cited the precedent of similar schemes implemented by prior Spanish governments of the conservative People’s Party.<\/p>\n
Bardella said that if his party won next year’s presidential election, it would enforce border controls and push for the freedom of movement granted under the Schengen agreement to be reserved exclusively for nationals of \u200cEU member states.<\/p>\n
Aside from Bardella and host Andre \u200bVentura, who leads the far-right Portuguese opposition party Chega, \u200bthe Patriots event brought together MEPs \u200band policy experts for a two\u2011day debate on energy sovereignty, territory \u200cand the broader future of Europe.<\/p>\n
Ventura claimed \u200bthe residence permits obtained \u200bby migrants in Spain were a ploy by Sanchez to reap votes in future elections and said it put all of Europe at risk.<\/p>\n
However, under Spanish electoral \u200blaw, only Spanish citizens are \u200celigible to vote in general elections. Migrants who obtain residency do not \u200bautomatically receive citizenship and therefore cannot vote.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Sergio Goncalves and Miguel Pereira; \u200bEditing by David Latona and William Maclean)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Sergio Goncalves and Miguel Pereira PORTO, Portugal, April 22 (Reuters) – France’s far-right National Rally would reintroduce…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9783,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2000,6221,66,6219,3177,6220,6222,17,3852],"class_list":["post-9782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-spain","tag-border-controls","tag-eu-nationals","tag-europe","tag-jordan-bardella","tag-living-in-spain","tag-national-rally","tag-patriots-for-europe","tag-spain","tag-undocumented-migrants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9782","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=9782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9782\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}