Gérald Darmanin wants to keep the article allowing the regularization of workers in professions in tension

The lunch at Place Beauvau, between the Minister of the Interior and the senators of the Law Commission, revolved a lot around the famous “article 3” devoted to the regularization of undocumented immigrants who work in professions in shortage. The meal – shrimp ceviche, salmon, chocolate mousse, all washed down with white wine – did not allow us to get to the end of the story.

Reassure the left wing of the majority

The Minister of the Interior pleaded for keeping this article 3 in the law, even if it were to be reworked so that regularizations were not automatic, just to be open to discussion. According to Gérald Darmanin, in any case, it is impossible to settle for sleight of hand by writing a circular, which will not need to be voted on. Before the circular, there should be a mention in the law, something to reassure the left wing of the presidential majority, which sees red as soon as regularization is threatened to please the right.

There were not many LR senators around the table. And for good reason: the group’s boss Bruno Retailleau deprived his colleagues of meals in Beauvau. He did not want the right to enter into Gérald Darmanin’s “seduction operation”. Only the president of the Law Commission, François-Noël Buffet, and the rapporteur of the text, Muriel Jourda, had the right to participate. A rebel LR senator also defied the ban.

François-Noël Buffet was not very talkative according to the guests. LR always makes regularizations a red line, which ends up exasperating its centrist allies in the Senate. “They’re starting to piss us offconfides one of them, every day they add conditions so as not to vote for the immigration law anyway”. The rest in the hemicycle will be on November 6 with the start of examination of the text.