The Annecy attack aroused a wave of unanimous emotion within the political world. But politics quickly resurfaced.
Reflection, emotion, compassion: when the tragedy was announced, all political leaders, majority and opposition alike, reacted with the same words. From Elisabeth Borne to Jean-Luc Mélenchon, from Marine Le Pen to Olivier Faure, it was a question of dread in the face of horror, of solidarity with the little victims and of support for their parents. A “nation in shock” of an attack by “absolute cowardice”, in the words of Emmanuel Macron. The National Assembly froze in a minute of silence respected on all benches.
National unity therefore but ephemeral unity, barely a few minutes, broken by the leaders of the right. While the elected LRs of the Annecy region called for decency, the boss of the Republicans Eric Ciotti did not have the same modesty. He called to shoot “all the consequences without naivety and with lucidity, from the profile” of the assailant, of Syrian nationality. The president of the LR group in the Senate, Bruno Retailleau, pointed out the “migratory laxity”. And his counterpart in the Assembly, Olivier Marleix, went further by launching: “Mass uncontrolled immigration kills”. He even claimed that the man was “dressed in green”, the color of Islam, when this was not the case and the individual calls himself a Christian. And the trio took advantage of these tragic circumstances to provide after-sales service for the immigration measures recently presented by LR: asylum requests made outside of French territory or even the superiority of French law over European law, i.e. a kind of of migratory Frexit.
Marine Le Pen more moderate in appearance
It is a distribution of roles in the National Rally: to Marine Le Pen the compassion for the victims, and to the boss of the party, Jordan Bardella, the responsibility of claiming the “challenging our entire migration policy and a number of European rules”which is exactly the same position as that of LR.
The investigation is barely open, the questions about the motivations of the assailant still countless. But the right and the extreme right only held out for a few minutes before opening a political controversy. This illustrates the climate that threatens the debate next semester on immigration, this explosive subject on which it is decidedly impossible to discuss and legislate serenely in France.