The president of the Les Républicains group in the Assembly believes in Le Figaro that the government is applying the law too “luggishly” and is not sufficiently implementing the obligations to leave French territory (OQTF) which have been imposed.
While parliamentarians from Nupes and the left wing of the majority signed a forum in Release to demand social measures in the immigration bill, which must arrive before Parliament this fall, the right is toughening its tone. Olivier Marleix, the president of the Les Républicains group in the Assembly, is threatening a motion of censure if the government does not go far enough for his liking.
In Le Figarothe member for Eure-et-Loir accuses the government of a certain weakness in this matter. “In 2012, the right executed 22% of OQTFs [obligations de quitter le territoire français]we fell to 7% in 2022. The law is however the same, it is just applied more laxly”, he says. A highly controversial subject, which regularly comes up in the news when people targeted by an OQTF but still present in the territory commit crimes or misdemeanors, as in the Lola affair.
The figures given by Olivier Marleix are true but they need to be qualified on several levels.
6.9% of OQTFs executed in 2022
The OQTF execution rate in 2022 is taken from the annual report of the General Controller of places of deprivation of liberty (p. 203), itself based on the general report of the Senate Finance Committee on the draft law. finances for 2023 (here and here).
According to the Controller, 4,474 OQTFs were executed in 2022 out of the 65,076 issued, i.e. an execution rate of approximately 6.9%. However, these figures only relate to the first six months of 2022 and not the entire year, so they are not really comparable to figures from other years.
2012, not a reference year
Furthermore, Olivier Marleix cites the year 2012 as a reference but that year is not representative, in reality, because it experienced a peak. The OQTF execution rate reached 22.4% that year, which was not the case previously, while the right was in power. Besides, in 2012, we cannot say that “the right” executed 22.4% of the OQTF since this year, which made the junction between the five-year term of Nicolas Sarkozy and that of the socialist François Hollande, the left was in power longer than the right.
Before 2012, during the years when France was ruled solely by the right, OQTF execution rates were 3.9% in 2007, 7.2% in 2008, 12.2% in 2009, 13.8% in 2010 and 16.7% in 2011. The trend was therefore increasing but without ever reaching a score like in 2012.
After the peak and the arrival of the left in power, the OQTF execution rate remained quite high, compared to what was done before, while gradually decreasing. 17.1% in 2013, 16.7% in 2014, 17% in 2015, 14.3% in 2016. In 2017, the year of transition between François Hollande and Emmanuel Macron, this continued to decline with an execution rate by 13.7%, then 12.6% in 2018, 12.2% in 2019, before falling completely in 2020 (6.9%) and 2021 (6%) due to Covid-19. Sending people back to their countries of origin was then almost impossible due to health and vaccination constraints.
A “mechanically” low rate because many OQTFs are pronounced
However, these execution rates must be put into perspective with the number of OQTFs pronounced. An information report from the Senate Constitutional Laws Committee on the migration issue highlights that “the number of measurements [d’éloignement, dont les OQTF] pronounced continuously increases while the volume of execution continues to deteriorate”.
Indeed, before 2020 and 2021, which are Covid years, the number of OQTFs pronounced increased, while the number of OQTFs executed increased much less quickly, or even stagnated. According to this report, “the rate of removal in France is mechanically lower” than in other European countries precisely because “the volume of removal measures issued annually in France is significantly higher”Yet “France is the State which carries out the most forced removals in volume within the European Union”.
This information report gives several explanations for this low execution rate. First, there is a lack of both material and administrative resources to be able to apply these measures. There is also a judicialization of detention which lengthens the procedures. The authorities sometimes have difficulty formally identifying the people targeted by OQTFs, since they are often issued against people who have just been arrested and who do not have any papers with them. Finally, some countries of origin of the targeted people do not cooperate. For example, for years, Algeria blocked everything and refused to take back its nationals.
The Interior criticizes the relevance of the OQTF execution rate
Contacted by franceinfo, the Ministry of the Interior believes that these execution rates were only estimates that did not represent much and that it was not really possible to count. Firstly because several OQTFs can concern the same person and, once this person is expelled under one of these obligations, the others fall.
On the other hand, OQTFs may be subject to appeal and, during this time, they are not enforceable. Some are only executed the following year but this delay is not taken into account in the execution rate. During a hearing before the Senate, the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin also said that around half of the OQTFs do not give rise to forced departures but to voluntary departures, which are not always reported to the security forces. ‘order. He stated that if we only took the constrained OQTFs, the execution rate was more like 40%, but these figures are not verifiable due to lack of data.
However, before, Beauvau itself published the OQTF execution rate. The Management Controller of places of deprivation of liberty notes that, since 2013, “the figures published by the Ministry of the Interior no longer distinguish removal measures according to the type of measure”whether it is an OQTF, an expulsion order, an inadmissibility or a prefectural deportation order.