After the hard-fought pension reform, it was the most important law that President Emmanuel Macron had planned for this year. But before the final text of a new immigration law could be substantively debated in the Assemblée Nationale on Monday, an occasional coalition of many shades of right and left shot down the plans. Eighteen months after the start of Macron’s second term, a motion by a Green MP, with support from Marine Le Pen’s radical right-wing Rassemblement National, among others, plunged the French government into a deep political crisis.
The idea of the law was, as always with Macron, twofold: the plans had to include something for both the right and the left. Ever since he took office as president in 2017, Macron, with the idea of strengthening the political center and finding pragmatic solutions, has and meme temps (‘at the same time’) the beating heart of his ideology. With only a relative majority in parliament and increasing polarization, this strategy seems bankrupt.
On the one hand, the new law should make it slightly more difficult for newcomers to enter France. For example, the number of possible appeals against a ruling on residence status had to be reduced from twelve to two. Immigrants who, in the words of ambitious Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, “behaved badly” could be deported more easily. Those who were allowed to stay had to integrate or, better yet, assimilate.
Also read
French government wants to satisfy left and right with new immigration law
approximately 350,000 vacancies open. When presenting his legal text at the beginning of this year, Darmanin said he wanted to be “mean” to “mean migrants” and “nice to the nice migrants”.
‘Political scam’
In the Senate, where the right has a large majority, the law was tightened slightly further, including options to make it easier to deport migrants with a criminal record. Subsequently, a number of issues were watered down in the lower house of parliament prior to the discussion, so that in the end almost no one except the members of Macron’s Renaissance party was satisfied with the whole thing. The right thought the law did not go far enough, the left thought the text was too repressive.
But even more than the content, for many MPs the political opportunity to deal a blow to the already weakened Macron and the government of the unpopular Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne counted. Partly because a number of Renaissance members withdrew, a narrow majority of 270 compared to 265 MPs voted in favor of the motion to immediately reject the immigration law. “This is a condemnation of it and meme temps” from Macron, Marine Le Pen also concluded in an initial response. According to her, his idea of a little left and a little right policy is a “political scam.” For her part, leader Mathilde Panot of the hard-left party La France Insoumise was happy that the country has now been spared “two weeks of racist and xenophobic statements” due to the canceled parliamentary debate.
The vote is a painful defeat for Macron. His second term as president is not really getting started. Supporters from the very beginning turn away from him. The former Green politician Daniel Cohn-Bendit said this week Le Monde that the “old politics” is back, while he too was initially seduced by Macrons and meme temps.
Tougher measures
Politicians from his party are now whispering to French media that this is largely due to the lack of a clear (read: absolute) majority in the Assembly since the elections of June last year. According to them, the president should dissolve parliament and call new elections. A large majority of 78 percent of French people support according to a poll by the Odoxa agency the now rejected immigration law, including the relaxations for undocumented migrants. But the chance that new elections will produce a majority that is more workable for Macron is small.
Also read
Gérald Darmanin, the minister who is pushing President Macron to the right
Reading list