Is Emmanuel Macron’s government on the verge of collapse? This is the question being asked in the French political class after the adoption, Tuesday evening, by 349 votes to 186, of a law much firmer than expected on immigration. Because the text could never have been adopted without the 88 votes of the National Rally (RN), the result shook the presidential majority and caused turmoil in the political world.
While in the National Assembly the RN congratulated itself on “an ideological victory”, the left denounced an “extreme right” law largely inspired by the ideas of the latter. Embodiment of the left wing of the majority and former chief of staff to Élisabeth Borne, the Minister of Health, Aurélien Rousseau, immediately slammed the door of the government, refusing to endorse a text that he considers too harsh. He could soon be followed by the Minister Delegate in charge of Housing, Patrice Vergriete. On Tuesday, two other ministers threatened to resign, while 25% of the elected majority refused to vote on the text.
A sign of the earthquake that is shaking his political family, the president rushed to the public channel France 5 on Wednesday evening to calm things down. In a two-hour interview, he affirmed that “we must accept what has been fact, we must remove a lot of untruths, we must also calm people’s minds.” Speaking of a text which is “the fruit of a compromise” and which he considers as a “shield that we lacked”, he recognized that he did not like everything in this law, which he also submitted for review by the Constitutional Council.
According to him, “if we say that there is no immigration problem, we are playing into the hands of the National Rally”. This law is in no way a victory for the RN, he says, whose action he describes as “bath boy maneuvers”. Then, as if nothing had happened, the president moved on to other subjects, such as the law on the end of life, the war in Israel, the handball cup and Gérard Depardieu’s Legion of Honor.
A first real political crisis
In the opinion of most observers, the president re-elected in 2022 without a parliamentary majority has just experienced his first real political crisis. The imbroglio of the last two weeks would even be unprecedented under the Ve Republic, if we are to believe the dean of political columnists who officiates on BFMTV, Alain Duhamel. He likes to recall that it was because it was the subject of permanent parliamentary instability that General de Gaulle put an end to IV in 1958.e Republic.
If the comparisons with this era seem exaggerated, for the moment at least, there is no doubt in anyone that the president experienced a real collapse on Tuesday. While some on the left, like the socialist Dieynaba Diop, go so far as to say that “Emmanuel Macron is an accelerator of the extreme right”, The Republicans (LR), who were the main architects of the text, welcome ‘a law that corresponds to the desires of the French. According to a survey carried out for BFMTV, it is also favored by 70% of them, even though 73% consider it inspired by the National Rally and 37% do not consider it tough enough.
An ideological victory
This parliamentary saga dates back more than a year ago, when the government proposed a 30e immigration law since 1980. It was intended to automatically regularize illegal immigrants who work in professions lacking labor and to simplify certain expulsion procedures. After a number of negotiations, the project was considerably toughened by the Senate, largely dominated by The Republicans (LR). Then, the text should have been amended, and probably tempered, by the National Assembly, if a surprise vote on a resolution by environmentalists had not interrupted the debate, sending it to a joint joint committee where the right (LR) forced the government made numerous concessions under penalty of having to abandon the project and lose face.
When, Tuesday at 3:30 p.m., Marine Le Pen announced to everyone’s surprise that the RN would vote in favor of the text, it was “an explosion”, said the president of the Renaissance group, Nadia Hai. Impossible for many left-wing Macronists to vote like Marine Le Pen’s party. In one, the daily Release recalls that in 2022, the very evening of his election, the president pledged to do everything “to block the far right”.
Accused of having carried out a political coup, the president of the RN sees this law as an “ideological victory” since she recognizes the principle long defended by her political family of “national preference”. As in many other European countries, foreigners who work in France will have to wait 30 months before receiving non-contributory benefits, such as family allowances. Those who do not work will have to wait five years. Thirty-two left-wing departments as well as the City of Paris have already indicated that they will not apply restrictions on access to personalized autonomy allowances (APA) which affect the elderly.
The end of “at the same time”
Among the measures that toughen reception conditions, the new law reinstates the offense of illegal stay and facilitates the expulsion of those who have been sentenced to prison terms of three years or more. Dual nationals responsible for crimes against the police may be stripped of French nationality and foreign students will have to post a deposit which will not be returned to them if they do not respect the obligations linked to their residence permit.
“There is no longer a Republican dam, a Republican arch, all of that is dead this evening,” lamented environmentalist MP Sandrine Rousseau. Opposite, the Republicans are jubilant, seeing in this vote of which they are the main architects a revenge for the cruel defeat (4.8%) of their candidate, Valérie Pécresse, in the last presidential election.
By wanting to facilitate regularizations to please his left and by facilitating the expulsion of illegal immigrants to please his right, the president seems to have lost on both counts. Will this parliamentary crisis be “the tomb of “at the same time””, wondered this week The Sunday Journal. In the same edition, we discovered that a large majority of French people believed that their security should take precedence over the rights of foreigners (73%) and that 65% wanted to curb labor immigration. A subject that this law does not address.
While the president announces a “meeting with the nation” in January, rumors of a reshuffle and the resignation of Élisabeth Borne have never been so strong.