French President Emmanuel Macron faces a perilous parliamentary test on Monday as doubts grow over whether he can secure majority support for his long-promised immigration reforms.
Opposition parties have piled pressure on Macron’s government with a last-minute parliamentary tactic known as a motion of censure, which could reject the bill before it even reaches the National Assembly for debate.
The threat is the latest sign of how Macron’s ability to legislate has been hampered since his re-election last year robbed his centrist alliance of its majority. His decision in April to overrule lawmakers and pass his flagship reform to raise the retirement age without a vote sparked street protests and backlash from political opponents.
Losing Monday’s vote would not necessarily kill the immigration bill, but it would be an embarrassing setback for both Macron and Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, who has spent months trying to win votes from the conservative Les Republicains (LR) party.
“This is a bill that takes a firm stance against illegal immigration and foreigners who commit crimes. … I don’t see how right-wing MPs can vote against it,” Darmanin told France Info on Friday. “We have to find a compromise.”
But Eric Ciotti, leader of the LR in the National Assembly, has vowed to vote against the current draft. “We will not be complicit in the predictable failure” of a proposal “without ambition”, Ciotti said.
Macron’s government, under pressure from Marine Le Pen’s resurgent far-right and a hardening of public opinion on immigration, has touted the reforms as a solution to long-standing problems. It would streamline the asylum system, reduce the number of appeals applicants can make from 12 to 2, require knowledge of French and aim to improve France’s relatively poor record on deportations.
But it also includes proposals, condemned by the right, to grant work permits to undocumented people employed in sectors with labour shortages, such as construction and healthcare. It is an example of Macron’s en même temps (at the same time) policy catchphrase, and a reflection of how the French president has long sought to borrow ideas from both the left and the right.
The LR and Le Pen’s Rassemblement National say the law amounts to an amnesty rewarding people who came to France illegally. Although the government has estimated that it would only affect around 7,000 workers a year, opponents say the number would be much higher.
“If we want to reduce the number of illegal immigrants once and for all, we must send a clear signal that those who come must respect our rules,” said Edwige Diaz, a Rassemblement National MP.
The government may again resort to an override mechanism on the immigration law, although both Darmanin and Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne have said they do not want to do so. This would allow opposition parties to table a motion of no confidence in order to bring down the government.
Critics of Macron’s approach argue that the new law consists largely of technocratic tweaks to procedures and administrative rules on an increasingly incendiary political issue.
The travails of the proposed law, which was first floated a year ago but repeatedly delayed, have played into Le Pen’s hands, allowing her to criticise the government as out of touch with public opinion.
Le Pen called it a “small, administrative law” that would not solve the problem of “anarchic immigration” and compared it to dozens of similarly ineffective reforms enacted in previous decades.
Its programme calls for a change to the French constitution to circumvent EU rules on migration and asylum, and to give French citizens priority over foreigners for social housing and public sector jobs.
The return of Islamist terrorist attacks on French soil has fed into the immigration debate. In one incident, a 20-year-old man from Chechnya who pledged allegiance to Islamic State killed a teacher. The investigation found that he had exploited a loophole to overturn a deportation order against him, prompting Darmanin to argue that his new law was needed to close it.
Much is at stake in the upcoming parliamentary session. “There’s a criticism that the state is powerless and ineffective in controlling immigration,” said Marc Ferracci, an MP from Macron’s Renaissance party. “It’s not true, but that’s what people believe. We have to prove that we can.”
