He is a collateral victim that few saw coming. At the end of the heated debates on the pension reform, at the end of which the government, in the absence of a majority, was forced to engage its responsibility by article 49.3 of the Constitution, another text with high potential for tension has been deprogrammed without further ado from the agenda of Parliament, the bill relating to immigration and integration, as revealed by Public Senate.
Already postponed many times, the text carried by the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, and that of Labour, Olivier Dussopt, pursued a double ambition. Increase the effectiveness of the integration of foreigners in the country by making it compulsory to acquire a certain level of French language in order to obtain long-term residence permits, in particular. As by facilitating the regularization of illegal immigrants present on the territory and working for "jobs in tension". The text was also to facilitate the expulsion from the territory of foreigners without title thanks to a simplification of administrative procedures or the restoration of the double penalty.
Alas, given the mired political situation, the president of Les Républicains du Sénat, Gérard Larcher, defended the idea with the head of state, during a lunch at the Élysée on Tuesday, to postpone the examination of the bill in the Senate, yet already discussed in the Law Committee and scheduled in plenary session at the Luxembourg Palace from March 28. "Gérard Larcher defended that it was pointless to do this next week, that it would strain everyone," reports an adviser to the executive.
If the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, was in no way at the initiative of this postponement, he undoubtedly spared him very delicate weeks and a possible snub. Even in the Senate, where there is a right-wing and center majority, the immigration and integration bill was already giving rise to deep fundamental disagreements between the components of the senatorial majority calling into question its adoption next week. “After the pension reform, the right wants to reassert its identity by very broadly tightening the text. But the center does not intend to let it happen and will not vote under these conditions, "delivered, a few days ago, a member of the Senate Law Commission.
During his interview with the 1 p.m. television news on Wednesday, Emmanuel Macron finally decided: the immigration bill will be "cut" into "shorter texts" which will be examined "in the coming weeks" by Parliament.
