Macron faces make or break moment on immigration bill

The Politico website published an article on French President Emmanuel Macron's failed migration policy. Caliber.Az reprints the piece.

A highly contentious immigration bill is putting Macron’s governing coalition to a test — and might as well blow it up.

The bill includes measures to legalize undocumented workers in some cases and speed up the removal of failed asylum seekers and migrants who have committed crimes on French soil.

French senators started debating legislation that has been carefully tailored to embody “toughness and simplicity,” with measures that are both “tough against [foreign] delinquents” and inspired by “humanity,” Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said in his opening remarks at the Senate on Monday.

The stakes are high for Macron’s troops, as a victory on the emotive topic of immigration would put Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally on the back foot ahead of European elections next year. But a defeat would give a boost to the opposition and fuel speculation that the French president has become a lame-duck president.

Immigration, always a key topic in French elections, has been super-charged in the wake of a surge of migrant arrivals recorded in the EU, and security fears linked to migration after attacks in Brussels and the northern French city of Arras. Israel’s war on Hamas, and fears of unrest in France where there are large Jewish and Muslim populations, has only further inflamed the debate.

For Macron, the stakes haven’t been higher since the government forced through its pensions reform, which sparked widespread unrest across the country earlier this year.

Macron’s government faces an uphill battle in the National Assembly where they have lost an absolute majority, and will have to convince lawmakers in a Senate dominated by opposition forces. The government will struggle to hold its coalition together and get the backing from like-minded lawmakers of the conservative Les Républicains party.

If both the conservatives and the left of the party refuse to compromise, the government may have to put its very survival on the line. To pass the legislation, the government can use an unpopular legislative device called article 49.3 that bypasses a vote in parliament, but which 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 the government is doing something ahead of the European elections, faced with a rise of the National Rally,” said Benjamin Morel, political scientist at the Paris Panthéon-Assas University.

Showdown with the opposition

In recent weeks, Macron’s government has pressed Les Républicains lawmakers to vote in favor of the bill, alternating between coaxing appeals and bullying undertones. The Renaissance Speaker of the National Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet challenged the conservatives to “stop talking and start acting” on immigration, while Darmanin promised to find “the right balance” with the Senate, which is dominated by rightwing forces.

Having lost a majority at the National Assembly in parliamentary elections last year, Macron’s centrist coalition has been relying on ad-hoc deals with the opposition Les Républicains to pass legislation.

But this week, the conservatives appeared to dash any hope of a compromise, despite immigration being a top priority for its electorate. Bruno Retailleau, head of the conservative parliamentary group in the Senate, said on Monday that the bill needed to be “very tough,” and warned his group would only vote “their bill, not the one belonging to Gérald Darmanin.”

The conservatives’ anger focuses on an article that creates a special residency permit for non-EU immigrants who work in industries where there are labor shortages. They say the measure would act as a pull factor for illegal migration.

According to Morel, the battle over this article is to a certain extent symbolic because the government could ease access to work permits by other means. “It doesn’t need to be in the bill. If it’s there, it’s only to defuse tensions with the left wing of the [centrist] majority,” said Morel.

But for the conservatives, the residency permit measure has become “a fixation”, according to Morel, because the party’s identity and the need to exist between the far right and Macron’s centrist coalition is at stake on core issues such as immigration.

Playing with fire

While the conservatives risk alienating their voters if they refuse 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 article on work permits as “a measure of common sense, 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 permits article in an attempt to compromise with the opposition, it risks splitting its own troops. Last month, a group of left-leaning Renaissance MPs signaled the key article was a red line for them, when they signed a call with leftwing opposition MPs calling for the legalization of undocumented workers in France.

The bill also risks exposing personal divisions inside the government, with the prime minister and the interior minister appearing to jostle for media attention, ahead of debates on Monday. “Borne wants to control everything, even the bill on immigration,” complained one government advisor, according to Paris Playbook.

The immigration bill is set to head to France’s lower house in December, following debates and votes at the Senate.

While the government has survived several no-confidence motions over the past year, nobody wants to run the risk of losing a vote, and another trial by fire in parliament will only leave Macron’s troops more bruised than before.