The immigration bill was stopped in its tracks Monday afternoon in the Assembly after the adoption of a rejection motion voted by all the oppositions. The majority did not have enough votes, nine deputies were missing.
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Some 270 opposition deputies rejected Gérald Darmanin’s immigration bill on Monday, December 11. In front of them, 265 deputies wanted to debate. five votes apart. The problem is that there were nine absent from the majority benches: including five Renaissance, three Modem and one Horizons. However, the government said that every vote would count, that we should not take any risks. Élisabeth Borne had even banned her ministers from traveling on Monday to avoid deputies going with them into the field.
These nine voices were sorely missed by Gérald Darmanin. A sign that the game was going to be close, Yaël Braun-Pivet took part in the vote. This is extremely rare, this is only the second time that the President of the National Assembly has voted since she took office. The last time was in January for the renewable energy acceleration bill.
Various reasons
Among the nine absent, there was, for example, Monique Iborra, Renaissance deputy for Haute-Garonne. Monday, she was in Toulouse with Emmanuel Macron for the two years of the France 2030 program. Others absent were in their constituency, like Amélia Lakrafi, elected from the French in the Middle East: she was in Qatar at the Doha forum on diplomacy . There are also imponderables: the Modem and Horizons elected officials had plane or train delays. “There are transport problems every week,” underlines the Modem group.
An advisor to the executive storms against these absentees who will have “accountability”but executives in the Assembly assure that there will be no “no witch hunt” because the mobilization of troops was almost maximum. The Renaissance group did the calculation: 97% of the Macronist deputies were there, and only 90% of the socialists, 85% of the LR. Proportionally, it was not in the Macronist ranks that there were the most absentees. “It’s annoying, laments a deputy, in reality we were very mobilized”. Someone close to Gérald Darmanin is a good player: “It’s not the fault of those who were absent, there were also missing MPs opposite.”. The majority prefers to pass the responsibility onto their opponents, especially the LRs.
