PARIS – A highly controversial immigration bill is testing Macron’s coalition government – and may well blow it up.
The bill includes measures to legalise undocumented workers in some cases and speed up the deportation of failed asylum seekers and migrants who have committed crimes on French soil.
French senators began debating legislation carefully tailored to embody ‘toughness and simplicity’, with measures that are both ‘tough on [foreign] criminals’ and inspired by ‘humanity’, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said in his opening remarks to the Senate on Monday.
The stakes are high for Macron’s troops: a victory on the emotive issue of immigration would put Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally on the back foot ahead of next year’s European elections. A defeat, however, would boost the opposition and fuel speculation that the French president has become a lame-duck.
Immigration, always a key issue in French elections, has been supercharged by a surge in migrant arrivals in the EU and security fears linked to migration after attacks in Brussels and the northern French city of Arras. Israel’s war against Hamas and fears of unrest in France, which has large Jewish and Muslim populations, have only added to the debate.
For Macron, the stakes haven’t been higher since the government pushed through its pension reform, which sparked widespread unrest across the country earlier this year.
Macron’s government faces an uphill battle in the National Assembly, where it has lost its absolute majority, and will have to convince lawmakers in a Senate dominated by opposition forces. The government will struggle to keep its coalition together and win the support of like-minded lawmakers from the conservative Les Républicains party.
If both the conservatives and the left refuse to compromise, the government may have to put its very survival on the line. To pass the law, the government can use an unpopular legislative device called Article 49.3, which bypasses a vote in parliament but allows the opposition to table motions of no confidence.
“The legislation is neither excellent nor very bad, it doesn’t change the fundamentals. It’s there … to show that the government is doing something before the European elections, in the face of the rise of the National Rally,” said Benjamin Morel, a political scientist at Paris’ Panthéon-Assas University.
Showdown with the opposition
Over the past few weeks, Macron’s government has pressured Les Républicains MPs to vote in favour of the bill, alternating between cajoling appeals and bullying undertones. National Assembly president Yaël Braun-Pivet urged the conservatives to “stop talking and start acting” on immigration, while Darmanin promised to “find the right balance” with the right-wing dominated Senate.
After losing its majority in the National Assembly in last year’s legislative elections, Macron’s centrist coalition has relied on ad hoc deals with the opposition Les Républicains to pass legislation.
But this week the conservatives appeared to dash any hopes of a compromise, despite immigration being a top priority for their voters. Bruno Retailleau, leader of the conservative group in the Senate, said on Monday that the bill had to be “very tough” and warned that his group would only vote for “their bill, not Gérald Darmanin’s”.
Conservative anger centres on an article that creates a special residence permit for non-EU immigrants working in sectors where there is a shortage of labour. They say the measure would act as a pull factor for illegal immigration.
According to Morel, the fight over this article is somewhat symbolic, as the government could facilitate access to work permits in other ways. “It doesn’t have to be in the law. If it’s there, it’s only to defuse tensions with the left wing of the [centrist] majority,” says Morel.
But for the conservatives, the residency measure has become “a fixation”, Morel said, because of the party’s identity and the need to exist between the far right and Macron’s centrist coalition on core issues such as immigration.
Playing with fire
While the conservatives risk alienating their voters by refusing to vote for a bill on a core conservative issue, Macron’s government faces an equally difficult dilemma that risks exposing its internal divisions.
Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne this week defended the work permit article as “a common sense measure that is widely supported”, just as Darmanin said he believed “a compromise” could be found with the conservatives.
But if the government drops the residency article in an attempt to compromise with the opposition, it risks splitting its own troops. Last month, a group of left-wing Renaissance MPs signalled that the key article was a red line for them when they signed a call with left-wing opposition MPs calling for the legalisation of undocumented workers in France.
The bill also risks exposing personal divisions within the government, with the prime minister and interior minister appearing to jostle for media attention ahead of Monday’s debates. “Borne wants to control everything, even the immigration bill,” complained one government adviser, according to Paris Playbook.
The immigration bill is due to be debated and voted on in the French lower house of parliament in December.
While the government survived several no-confidence motions last year, no one wants to risk losing a vote, and another trial by fire in parliament will only leave Macron’s troops more bruised than before.
