Alexandre Chauveau, edited by Romain Rouillard / Photo credit: LUDOVIC MARIN / AFP
New reversal at the highest summit of the State on the question of immigration. The government will finally propose a bill in July, while the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, indicated last month that the presentation of the said bill should be postponed. The head of government then evoked the absence of a sufficient majority to vote for it.
A return to square one in which we must see the paw of Emmanuel Macron. The Head of State had made immigration a priority in mid-April, before his Prime Minister postponed the presentation of the bill. In addition to the question of the majority, Elisabeth Borne also saw it as a potential source of division within the country.
LR will table its own bills on the subject
This Tuesday noon, the Elysée therefore decided during the traditional weekly lunch between the president and the Prime Minister. The latter, in the process, applied the instruction by receiving Matignon Olivier Dussopt, Franck Riester and especially Gérald Darmanin, the Minister of the Interior, now in search of a majority with LR. The party chaired by Eric Ciotti is also preparing to table two bills on immigration with measures presented as radical and, above all, non-negotiable.
“No turnaround”, according to Olivier Véran
The relaunch of consultations for the presentation of a new text on immigration in July does not constitute “no reversal”, assured Wednesday the spokesman of the government, Olivier Véran. “There is a precision on the method and the ‘timing’, but no reversal”, declared the representative of the government at the end of the Council of Ministers.
“It has always been said that the immigration bill would be examined by Parliament in the fall. For (that), it must have been presented to the Council of Ministers before,” he said. justified, by arguing that “September (being) a month devoted to senatorial elections”, “you get to July”.
Clearly, LR wants to force the government to align itself with its positions. A hypothesis that Gérald Darmanin could consider, unlike Élisabeth Borne, much more concerned with keeping the left wing of the majority. A showdown that could again be decided by Emmanuel Macron.