Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares has formally asked the European Commission to convene an urgent working group to solve the month-long stand-off that has left thousands of Moroccan truck drivers unable to obtain multiple-entry Schengen visas in Tangier and Casablanca. According to diplomatic cables seen by Hespress, the backlog exceeds 18,000 applications, stranding perishable agricultural cargo at Algeciras and causing Spanish car-parts plants in Pamplona and Vigo to air-freight critical components at fifteen times the normal cost.
![Spain presses EU to end Moroccan truck-driver visa bottleneck]()
For businesses and individual hauliers scrambling for alternatives, VisaHQ offers an efficient workaround: the company’s Spain portal (https://www.visahq.com/spain/) lets users monitor consular policy shifts in real time, pre-fill Schengen visa forms, and secure the earliest possible biometric appointments—helping logistics managers keep fleets moving even when official channels are congested.
The dispute dates back to 1 May, when Spain switched its consulates to the new EU Entry/Exit System (EES). Morocco’s biometric-data tender for its visa agencies has not yet been awarded, meaning drivers cannot produce the live fingerprints now required for a long-stay C-type visa. Madrid granted a two-week grace period, but French and Italian border guards continued to turn Moroccan hauliers back at Perthus and Ventimiglia, arguing that manual stamps are no longer valid. Spanish exporters say daily losses on the Andalusia–Île-de-France citrus route alone top €4 million. Albares is proposing an emergency derogation that would allow drivers to enrol biometrics on first entry at Spanish ports and receive a provisional visa valid for 90 days, similar to the waiver Spain introduced for UK seasonal workers in 2021. Logistics associations ASTIC and CETM back the plan, warning that supply-chain instability could otherwise coincide with the summer produce peak. Brussels has so far signalled only that “technical discussions are ongoing”. For multinationals that depend on ‘just-in-time’ deliveries from North Africa—among them Ford Almussafes and Inditex—contingency options include switching to short-sea shipping via Sète or Genoa, but both ports are already at 92 percent capacity. Risk managers are therefore advised to build at least 96 hours of buffer stock for goods originating in Morocco and to alert travellers that ad-hoc police checks of commercial vehicles have intensified on the A-7 corridor. In the medium term, industry bodies view the crisis as a test case for how quickly the EU can align its digital border reforms with the practical realities of third-country trade. If a fix is not found before the EES enforcement date of 1 September, they fear that other key labour segments—such as Algerian oil-service technicians operating in Spain—could be next in line for disruption.
For businesses and individual hauliers scrambling for alternatives, VisaHQ offers an efficient workaround: the company’s Spain portal (https://www.visahq.com/spain/) lets users monitor consular policy shifts in real time, pre-fill Schengen visa forms, and secure the earliest possible biometric appointments—helping logistics managers keep fleets moving even when official channels are congested.
The dispute dates back to 1 May, when Spain switched its consulates to the new EU Entry/Exit System (EES). Morocco’s biometric-data tender for its visa agencies has not yet been awarded, meaning drivers cannot produce the live fingerprints now required for a long-stay C-type visa. Madrid granted a two-week grace period, but French and Italian border guards continued to turn Moroccan hauliers back at Perthus and Ventimiglia, arguing that manual stamps are no longer valid. Spanish exporters say daily losses on the Andalusia–Île-de-France citrus route alone top €4 million. Albares is proposing an emergency derogation that would allow drivers to enrol biometrics on first entry at Spanish ports and receive a provisional visa valid for 90 days, similar to the waiver Spain introduced for UK seasonal workers in 2021. Logistics associations ASTIC and CETM back the plan, warning that supply-chain instability could otherwise coincide with the summer produce peak. Brussels has so far signalled only that “technical discussions are ongoing”. For multinationals that depend on ‘just-in-time’ deliveries from North Africa—among them Ford Almussafes and Inditex—contingency options include switching to short-sea shipping via Sète or Genoa, but both ports are already at 92 percent capacity. Risk managers are therefore advised to build at least 96 hours of buffer stock for goods originating in Morocco and to alert travellers that ad-hoc police checks of commercial vehicles have intensified on the A-7 corridor. In the medium term, industry bodies view the crisis as a test case for how quickly the EU can align its digital border reforms with the practical realities of third-country trade. If a fix is not found before the EES enforcement date of 1 September, they fear that other key labour segments—such as Algerian oil-service technicians operating in Spain—could be next in line for disruption.
