Renaissance MP (ex-LREM) Sacha Houlié tabled a bill on Tuesday to “grant the right to vote and stand as a candidate in municipal elections” to all foreigners, even non-Europeans, arousing criticism from the RN.
Renaissance MP (ex-LREM) Sacha Houlié tabled a bill on Tuesday to “grant the right to vote and stand as a candidate in municipal elections” to all foreigners, even non-Europeans, arousing criticism from the RN.
“This recognition is long overdue. Yet we owe it to those who have often and for a long time participated in the dynamism of our society”, defends the text of the proposal, which also denounces “discrimination between two categories of foreigners”.
Since 1992, only citizens of member countries of the European Union can vote in municipal elections. Mr. Houlié wants to waive this condition.
“It no longer shocks anyone to see Spaniards or Bulgarians vote in municipal elections in France. But it shocked a lot of people that the English no longer have the right to vote in France after Brexit”, explains the deputy of the Vienna to AFP. Mr. Houlié will present this bill, “filed in a personal capacity”, to the Renaissance group at the start of parliament.
Sea serpent on the left, this right to vote for foreigners in local elections had been promised by François Mitterrand and François Hollande, without success.
A position he intends to assert in October
On the far right, the interim president of the National Rally Jordan Bardella was indignant: “While Gérald Darmanin agitated the media over the (failed) expulsion of an Islamist, the macronists were quietly filing a bill to foreigners’ right to vote,” he tweeted.
He was referring to the judicial suspension of the expulsion of Imam Iquioussen, accused by French authorities of having made anti-Semitic, homophobic and “anti-women” remarks during sermons or conferences, nearly 20 years for some.
In his tweet, Mr. Bardella also denounces a “final dispossession of the French from their country”. Mr. Houlié prefers to see it as a “long and beautiful fight”. “France would enrich its model of integration” he argues, and “would also ebb community demands that feed on marginalization”.
A position he intends to put forward in October, during the debate on immigration proposed by Gérald Darmanin.
“What worries me is the populist debate on this issue. Being able to embrace all the subjects that directly or indirectly affect foreigners in France is a way of giving it a little height”, wants to believe Mr. Houlié.