After almost eleven weeks of extraordinary passport controls, Spain and Italy have simultaneously withdrawn the temporary border checks they had re-introduced on flights and ferries between the two countries. Spain’s Interior Ministry allowed Order INT/1033/2026 to expire at 24:00 on 22 October, while Italy’s last notification to the European Commission ran out in the early hours of 23 October. From today, travellers once again enjoy the standard Schengen regime: carriers will still check identity documents for boarding, but systematic police inspections on arrival are no longer performed. The controls dated back to 1 August, when Rome began stamping passports of passengers arriving from Spain, citing a spike in irregular migration through Ceuta. Madrid replied on 8 August with mirror checks on Italian arrivals. The tit-for-tat measures complicated business itineraries during the busy late-summer season, forcing airlines and ferry companies to build additional connection time into schedules and prompting some firms to postpone cross-border assignments. Tourism boards on both sides welcomed the return to normality. Italy is Spain’s fifth-largest source market, generating 4.4 million visitors in the first eight months of 2026, according to Spain’s National Statistics Institute. Business-travel analysts estimate that the extra step at the border had added an average 25–40 minutes to Madrid-Milan and Barcelona-Rome flight connections, inflating duty-trip costs by roughly €4.6 million across the two markets since August. For mobility managers the key practical takeaway is that no new paperwork is required after 23 October; however, companies should remind employees that carriers may still deny boarding without a valid travel document. Posted workers and digital-nomad visa-holders remain subject to existing residence-permit carriage rules. Employers moving equipment by truck should also note that land borders were never affected and remain open as usual. Finally, the episode serves as a reminder that Schengen’s safeguard clause allows any member to re-impose internal frontier checks for renewable 15-day periods when public-order risks are alleged. Contingency planning—extra connection time, flexible ticketing and real-time travel-risk tracking—should therefore stay on the corporate mobility checklist even after today’s reprieve.
Source: Ladevi
