“It’s horribly cynical, but…” – L’Express

On immigration, the right puffs out its chest. In May, our three friends posed on the front page of Sunday newspaper. Olivier Marleix threatens in a cross-interview to bring down the government if it comes through in force. Too bad if Eric Ciotti and Laurent Wauquiez were not warned of this announcement. What does it matter if the text has a repressive tone and aims to facilitate the removal of delinquent foreigners. The right has an ace in its game. Its famous article 3 plans to regularize foreigners exercising a profession in shortage. A scarecrow as much as a gift from heaven. Here is Macronism on the left! The right can finally distinguish itself from the majority.

LR is increasing its initiatives. Here, a constitutional law proposal to derogate from European law on migration matters. There, a national petition to force Emmanuel Macron to organize a referendum. The right poses as a ventriloquist for an opinion hungry for firmness. Above all, she is united. Forgotten, the ideological divide observed during the pension reform. Immigration is a genetic subject for her, the differences are almost zero. From December 2022, Eric Ciotti confides to government spokesperson Olivier Véran: “Pensions yes, immigration, no.”

But beware of appearances. Nothing is ever simple at LR, a party battered by electoral defeats and devoid of an authority figure. The ideological consensus poorly masks strategic dissensions, which examination of the bill risks amplifying. Demanding firmness in unison on TV sets is good. Being in tune with Parliament is better. The right has an ambivalent status there. It has a majority in the Senate and enjoys a miraculous role of arbiter in the Assembly thanks to the relative majority. Two houses, two political cultures. The LR senators, who examine the text first, wish to send a muscular version to the National Assembly, despite their refusal to endorse article 3. Not won, for lack of agreement with their centrist partners. The President of the Upper House Gérard Larcher is particularly keen on this, concerned with the prestige of his institution. At the Luxembourg Palace, the pen writes the law and does not simply cross out the lines of the executive.

Olivier Marleix regrets it. The boss of LR deputies, a visceral anti-macronist, would like the Senate to reject the text en bloc. The man wants to strike and is keen on the fragile unity of his group in the Assembly, under pressure if a text labeled “Right-wing Senate” comes back to him. “Retaileau is led by what he believes to be the general interest, Marleix by hatred of Macron,” says an LR executive. Relations between the two men are fresh. “Stop voting on texts to save two or three amendments,” Olivier Marleix told his counterpart in October during a party strategic council.

Gérald Darmanin welcomes these tensions. The choice to begin examining the text in the Senate is his. The Minister of the Interior is banking on a division of the LR group in the Assembly to win. These 62 self-employed people do as they please, he thinks he can convince some of them. Several refused to associate themselves with Olivier Marleix’s referral to the CNIL against him. The latter, who refuses any meeting with the minister, accuses the former LR of “collecting data” on right-wing elected officials who demand regularization of undocumented workers in their constituency. In private, the tenant of Beauvau criticizes the president of the LR group, “very helpless when the text came”, as the weak link in this war of nerves.

Because this text is visibly hardening. The government endorses the senatorial right’s tightening of the screws on its repressive aspect as well as on the reform of state medical aid. He says he is open to a devitalization of the famous article 3 and brandishes the polls approving the text. “In the absence of article 3, at least 20 LR deputies will vote for it,” judges a parliamentarian. LR management is trying to resist this steamroller. Eric Ciotti criticizes a law “not up to the migratory challenge”, which will “change nothing essentially”. In an internal memo addressed to LR deputies, Olivier Marleix crushes a “left-wing” text and trashes almost every article. Be careful not to summarize the text in its suspended article 3. Nothing needs to be saved!

This cultural battle is being fought against unequal odds. The right has marginal speaking time on television, the executive is omnipresent there to praise the firmness of its project. Brice Hortefeux experienced this asymmetrical war. In 2008, Nicolas Sarkozy’s Minister of Immigration broke Cimade’s monopoly for access to administrative detention centers (CRA). “You have won the battle of communication,” says its president Patrick Peugeot. “I had the strike force of ministers and parliamentarians,” remembers the former tenant of Beauvau.

This battle of opinion is all the tougher as the right deploys a message whose subtlety flirts with bad faith. Can we vote against a text that does not go far enough? Not easy. The general secretary of LR Annie Genevard tries it: “A small step in such a serious situation amounts to aggravating the situation instead of resolving it.” A close friend of Eric Ciotti sums up: “It’s horribly cynical, but the ideal would be for article 3 to remain and for us to vote against the text.” And then, the weapon of censorship is so uncertain. The Socialist Party and the ecologists announced that they would not vote for it. Side A: it will be easier to obtain the 58 signatures for a blank shot. Side B: the government has nothing to fear from LR.

The fate of the bill is unclear, but something else is brewing. As always, the right is confronted with the existential question of its relationship to Macronism. Is she a resolute opponent or a demanding partner? Eternal dilemma of a party in search of political oxygen. If she opposes the text, she will be accused of hypocrisy by her detractors. If she approves it, the RN will portray her as a crutch of the executive. “It will be complicated to make the French understand that by validating a text, we are not being Macronist,” notes a leader. “Even if a right-wing text is adopted in the Senate, it will symbolically once again become the government’s project in the Assembly,” says an LR pillar. The executive will say to the deputies: ‘vote for my text’! Heads I win, tails you lose.

All against the backdrop of European elections. The right will have to justify its reason for being in the face of Renaissance and the RN. Olivier Marleix warned François-Xavier Bellamy on the effects of LR support for the immigration text: “You will have to assume the same assessment as Macron in terms of European migration policy. The European pact is an EPP pact [NDLR : le Parti populaire européen], the president will pride himself on it. If you have the same national record and we leave the RN the opposition monopoly on immigration, good luck to you!”

The immigration bill is yet another indicator of this: the relative majority is a poisoned chalice for the Republicans. THE The gap between the pivotal role of the party in the making of the law and its internal weaknesses is glaring. From this contradiction open-air psychodramas can arise, as they influence the adoption of laws. The right needs peace and quiet to rebuild itself, the relative majority has decided otherwise. After pensions, immigration is a new crash test. An LR executive sums up: “If we are not clear and divided on this subject, we might as well close the shop.”