“We will find a way through” so that it can be adopted, assures Éric Dupond-Moretti

The joint committee will meet on Monday. If there is an agreement, parliament will be called to vote the next day.

“I have confidence in the work that will be carried out before the joint committee” on the immigration bill, said Thursday December 14 on France Inter the Minister of Justice, Éric Dupond-Moretti “We will find a way of passage which will allow us to harden [la loi en vigueur] against those who are undesirable among us, while allowing us to regularize those who participate in our economy, who are perfectly integrated”he assures.

The right does not want regularization of workers in professions in shortage. However, given the composition of the joint committee, the majority will have to come to an agreement with it if it wants to bring its text to fruition.

“The story is not over yet”, added the Minister of Justice, after the rejection of the examination of this bill by the National Assembly on Monday. An episode which outraged him, because that day, “those who won were the smugglers”. “There was in this section of the law, carried by Gérald Darmanin [le ministre de l’Intérieur], the toughening of penalties against smugglers. I wanted to make it a crime, it’s the little ‘justice’ part of this text”, he adds. After the vote of the deputies, “They must be rubbing their hands, these people who have no consideration for human life” and that “take money from unfortunate people who want to leave the misery that is theirs.”

As for those who have “lost”, “it is those who work for us who are foreigners, whom we intended to regularize”. According to him, “60% of people who work in construction in the Paris region are foreigners”and even if “not all of them are in an irregular situation, some of them are.” “If we want to imagine for a moment France without this workforce, I don’t know who picks the fruits and vegetables, I don’t know who drives the taxis, I don’t know who does the cooking, I don’t know not who is in the construction industry”he says, because “all professions in shortage need this workforce”.

Made up of seven deputies and seven senators, this joint committee will meet Monday at 5 p.m. Of these fourteen parliamentarians, five are part of the majority and five others are from the right. In the event of agreement on a text, the vote in the National Assembly and the Senate will take place on Tuesday, according to the Ministry of Relations with Parliament.