Spain’s Council of Ministers used its 3 March session to approve and send to Parliament the long-awaited draft Statute for non-work-based practical training. The bill, nicknamed the “Internship Statute”, draws a bright legal line between genuine educational placements and disguised employment, a grey area that has long complicated global-mobility planning for multinationals operating in Spain. Under the text, all internships linked to university programmes, vocational qualifications or public-employment training must be formalised in writing through a tri-partite agreement between the company, the training centre and the intern. Foreign students and recent graduates will benefit from clearer residence status: if the placement respects the new rules it remains under the student-stay regime, while any arrangement that replaces an employee constitutes an employment relationship and must follow full work-permit procedures. Key protections include mandatory expense reimbursement, dual academic-and-company supervision, maximum duration caps and fines that can exceed €250 000 for abuses. The Labour Inspectorate will receive extra resources to police compliance, a welcome move for global HR teams that struggle with uneven enforcement across Spain’s 17 regions. For employers, the Statute offers long-term certainty when rotating interns from other EU and third-country offices. Placement calendars, social-security contributions and housing allowances can now be budgeted against a single national standard. Universities hosting Erasmus+, Fulbright and other international cohorts expect the clarified framework to boost Spain’s attractiveness as a training destination, further feeding the country’s graduate-talent pipeline. The government hopes parliamentary passage before summer will let the rules enter into force on 1 September, aligning with the academic calendar. Corporations should audit ongoing and upcoming internship schemes to ensure documentation and remuneration meet the new thresholds, particularly for digital-nomad dependants and accompanying spouses who often undertake unpaid placements.
Source: La Moncloa
