French MPs Prepare to Vote on Spanish-Style Regularisation for Undocumented Workers

Members of the French parliament are set to vote on an amnesty plan designed to grant legal status to hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants. The initiative draws directly on the model pursued in Spain by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, which linked regularisation to employment and economic integration. Raphaël Glucksmann, currently running as a presidential candidate, is expected to endorse the measure, lending high-profile political weight to a legislative push that tackles one of the country's most fiercely contested domestic issues.

For hundreds of thousands of unauthorised workers, the measure would mean the difference between the informal economy and recognised legal employment, complete with contracts, tax obligations, and access to standard workplace protections. For national politics, it signals a significant counter-narrative to the prevailing European trend of tightening immigration rules. While proponents point to labour shortages and the economic logic of turning undeclared work into taxable revenue, critics in national parliaments routinely argue that large-scale regularisations create a durable pull factor for irregular arrivals.

Migration debates in Brussels tend to consume endless hours of summitry over external border walls and return hubs, but regularisation itself remains an area where member states stubbornly guard their domestic prerogatives. The European Union has no unified rulebook dictating who gets an amnesty. Yet because the Schengen area eliminates internal border controls, granting legal status to workers in Paris or Madrid inevitably stirs quiet anxiety in neighbouring capitals, where interior ministries watch one government's domestic labour solution with the fear that freedom of movement will soon make it everyone else's reality.

The draft proposal will face debate and a vote on the floor of the French parliament, where lawmakers must decide whether to adopt the Spanish model or reject broad regularisation ahead of the upcoming presidential contest.