The immigration bill, whose examination in the Senate with a right-wing majority has been postponed, is an "indispensable" text which cannot be "sliced up", said Thursday, March 23, President LR of the Senate Gérard Larcher on LCI , the day after Emmanuel Macron's announcements.
Adopted last week in committee - with several tougher provisions - the text was to be examined at first reading in the hemicycle from next Tuesday. The head of state announced on Wednesday that the bill, which satisfies neither the right nor the left, would be cut into "several texts".
The conference of presidents of the Senate (which brings together in particular all the presidents of the political groups) on Wednesday evening recorded the withdrawal from the agenda of this controversial bill, carried by the Ministers of the Interior Gérald Darmanin and Work Olivier Dussopt. However, said Gérard Larcher, if the Senate "agrees" for the text to be removed from the agenda, its examination "can only be postponed".
"There is no question for the Conference of Presidents of a text that is sliced up as was mentioned by the President of the Republic," continued Gérard Larcher. For the President of the Senate, "a migration policy is a whole". "It is a text, like pensions, essential, which must be debated on the merits and which must provide answers", he underlined. "Going to slalom is undoubtedly an interesting exercise for skiers, but I think that in politics you need consistency, courage," he said.
"That's not a policy"
In a letter addressed to Gérard Larcher on Wednesday, of which Agence France-Presse had a copy, Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne explains the withdrawal of the initial text to "be able to build with the two assemblies, the best method in order to move forward as quickly as possible on these major issues, without calling into question the strong ambitions of this text both in terms of immigration control and in the field of integration".
Mr. Larcher acknowledged that he himself had asked for the postponement of the consideration of the text. "I take my responsibilities, it was I who spoke on Sunday evening with the President of the Republic of the need for such an important text (to be) examined in peaceful conditions," he said.
Criticizing a "rather baroque method", the socialist deputy Jérôme Guedj recalled that "we were presented with this reform as being absolutely essential, when it was only Macron who sought to run on the lands of the far right". "If you sausage, you take a little bit here, a little bit there, that's not a policy," he said on Franceinfo. "Make a law for a law and a law that will ultimately increase immigration issues, it is better to do nothing," said MP RN Thomas Ménagé on RMC.
