The French Senate, dominated by the right and the center, largely adopted, Tuesday evening, an immigration bill, which is causing a political crisis within the camp of President Emmanuel Macron, due to the support displayed by the extreme party right of Marine Le Pen, while awaiting the vote of the Assembly in the evening.
The text, marked on the right, applauded by the far right and denounced on the left as a “great moment of dishonor” for the French government, is the fruit of a compromise painfully reached during the day by a commission of seven deputies and seven senators from all sides.
It establishes, according to the left and the far right, a “national priority” for the French vis-à-vis foreigners. According to parliamentary sources, it distinguishes in particular between non-EU foreigners “in a situation of employment” and those without work, for several types of social benefits.
Marine Le Pen, president of the deputies of the National Rally (far right), hailed “an ideological victory” for her party and announced that her deputies would vote for the text “since the national priority is now enshrined in this law, it is that is to say the advantage given to the French compared to foreigners present on our territory in access to a certain number of social benefits.
Initially, the bill was intended to be a marker of the “at the same time” dear to centrist President Emmanuel Macron, with on one side a repressive component on the expulsion of foreigners in an illegal situation and, on the other, the promise of regularize certain workers in professions in shortage.
But it was resoundingly rejected last week in the National Assembly by the left and right oppositions, weakening the presidential camp, which only has a relative majority in Parliament.
To ensure the support of the Republicans (LR, right), whose positions on immigration have come closer to those of the far right in recent years, the government has therefore increased its concessions.
The presidential camp has validated several measures demanded by the right, in particular multi-year immigration quotas defined in Parliament and the reinstatement of an offense of illegal residence punishable by a fine. The text also provides that the regularization of undocumented workers will be done on a case-by-case basis and under the responsibility of the prefects.
But the government took the risk of alienating the more centrist fringe of its own parliamentarians, an unprecedented divide since Emmanuel Macron came to power in 2017.
Very embarrassed by the support given to the text by the RN, parliamentarians from the majority indicated that they would vote against. The support of the far right is akin to the “kiss of death” for the majority, alarmed an early Macronist.
Three members of the government have put their resignation in the balance and must meet in the evening with other refractories, all from the left wing of the macronie, according to corroborating sources. Even the “Young people with Macron” movement called on ministers and parliamentarians not to support an “unacceptable” text.
Faced with this crisis, President Macron urgently called an emergency meeting on Tuesday before the vote in both chambers, to take stock with the Prime Minister, the group presidents and the party leaders of the majority.
“Dishonor”
The leader of the socialist deputies, Boris Vallaud, described the compromise as “a moment of dishonor for the government” while the leading figure of the La France insoumise (radical left) movement, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, considered that it “ disfigure[ait] the image of France.
Theorized in the 1980s by the executives of the National Front, the ancestor of the RN, the “national preference”, renamed “national priority”, is one of the foundations of the program of this party, which has long contributed to its ostracization in the French political class.
This idea has, however, become “debatable” since the qualification of Marine Le Pen in the second round of the last two presidential elections (2017 and 2022), and while the RN is given the lead in the polls for the European elections in June 2024, far ahead of any other training, observes the political scientist specializing in the extreme right Jean-Yves Camus.
“Five years ago, when Marine Le Pen’s chances of victory were just a chimera, this type of proposal would not have been accepted,” he notes.
A recurring subject in France, as elsewhere in Europe, immigration regularly ignites the political class. A very controversial reform on the subject is also under discussion in Brussels.
France has 5.1 million foreigners in a legal situation, or 7.6% of the population. It hosts more than half a million refugees. The authorities estimate that there are 600,000 to 700,000 illegal immigrants.
Regularizations are nevertheless desired by part of French employers, faced with the hundreds of thousands of vacant positions in the hotel and catering industry, construction, agriculture, etc.