The Supreme Court has rejected a precautionary suspension of the quota of unaccompanied migrant minors that each autonomous community must accommodate, as established in a royal decree approved in August and which the Balearic Islands, Valencian Community, or Andalusia had requested to halt.
The high court has made this decision in three rulings adopted in the last ten days, rejecting the precautionary suspension of the measure adopted by the central government to obligatorily distribute the reception of unaccompanied minors among the entire country, given the migratory contingency situation in the Canary Islands, Ceuta, and Melilla.
Specifically, and without delving into the merits of the case, the Supreme Court rejects the request from the Balearic Islands, the Valencian Community, and Andalusia to provisionally suspend Royal Decree 743/2025, of August 26, which set the ordinary reception capacity of each community at a ratio of 32.6 unaccompanied minors per 100,000 inhabitants.This ratio is used to determine the number of minor migrants that each territory must accommodate to alleviate the resources of areas in migratory contingency, which are those that host triple the number of migrant children and adolescents than their ordinary capacity, currently the Canary Islands, Ceuta, and Melilla.
The high court, which on October 7 already rejected the extremely urgent interim suspension requested by the Balearic Islands, also rejects the interim suspension in a ruling adopted on December 9, which EFE has accessed, and in which it argues that a substantive review of the decree under appeal is necessary and that the appeal does not lose its purpose if the interim suspension is not adopted, because the appeal is against the reasoning and not the transfers, which could indeed cause alleged harm.
Despite not delving into the merits of the decree under appeal, the Supreme Court responds to the Balearic Islands' warning about the danger of overoccupying their resources if they must accommodate more minors and the need to protect the best interests of the child, pointing out that this archipelago is not in a migratory contingency, as is the case in the Canary Islands, Ceuta, and Melilla.
Ten autonomous communities appealed the reform before the Supreme Court
"That superior interest of the minor would, in principle, support a possible transfer of foreign minors to centers in the autonomous community of the Balearic Islands, coming from the Canary Islands and the autonomous cities," states the Supreme Court, which in any case emphasizes that the transfers are not being challenged, but rather the ordinary capacity set for the autonomous community's protection system.
The Supreme Court has used the same arguments to reject the precautionary suspension requested by Andalusia and the Valencian Community, in two rulings issued by the Fifth Section of the Contentious-Administrative Chamber on December 3 and 15, respectively, which EFE has accessed.
The setting of the ordinary capacity of the autonomies was the last legislative step of the mandatory solidarity mechanism launched by the Government, which included the reform of the immigration law, which is being appealed before the Constitutional Court by ten autonomies governed by the PP and by Castilla-La Mancha, managed by the PSOE.