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France’s Constitutional Council has clearly torn apart the new migration law. He criticized and rejected 32 of 86 articles as unconstitutional. This means that numerous tightening measures that the parliamentary right had written into it in December will be removed from the law.
Criticism of the procedure
It’s about barriers to family reunification and longer waiting periods for foreigners for social benefits and benefits. The law also imposed higher fees for foreign students and stipulated that staying illegally in France would again be considered a criminal offense in the future.
These are some of the tightening measures that the Constitutional Council has now removed from the law. However, more for formal and less for substantive reasons. Because the Constitutional Council hardly ever takes a position on the substance in its judgment.
He criticizes the fact that these articles were only incorporated into the law during parliamentary deliberations, without any closer internal connection to the government’s original migration law. This had called for simpler rules for the processing of asylum applications and for expulsion, but at the same time should also make the integration of migrants easier.
Right wants to make France unattractive for migration
However, during deliberations in parliament, the government quickly lost control. Because the government does not have its own majority in the National Assembly, it needs allies that it hoped to find on the right. And from this position of strength, they called for numerous tightening measures that were intended to make France unattractive as a country for migration.
Numerous provisions were introduced into the law with the thrust that right-wing nationalists like Marine Le Pen had long been calling for: “Les Français d’abord – French first.” She was the real winner of the migration debate, even though she hardly ever spoke.
Immediately after the final vote, President Macron presented the new law to the Constitutional Council. Who has now reversed a large part of the restrictions.
Law is back on square one
Now it’s President Macron’s turn again. He can either have a new bill drawn up – or bring into force those parts that the Constitutional Council has not criticized. He has every reason to take this second path. Because now the migration law corresponds again to the draft that the government presented a year ago.
The Constitutional Council has straightened out the matter for the president.
And yet the decision of the constitutional guardians is also a rebuke to the president. He had made numerous concessions in the course of political negotiations because he wanted to save his prestige bill.
Macron now gets the migration law. His main rival Marine Le Pen can still be happy. If Macron criticizes Le Pen’s course in the future, she will counter that, in case of doubt, he too will vote for “Les Français d’abord” if it serves his own interests.