Faced with the crisis caused by the rejection of the immigration law in the Assembly, Emmanuel Macron summoned ministers and majority leaders. Silencing rumors, he clarified his ambition for the text and reminded everyone of their “responsibilities”.
A call to order in the midst of a crisis. After a meeting in Matignon in the hours following the rejection of the immigration bill in the National Assembly and an interview preceding the Council of Ministers on Tuesday morning, Emmanuel Macron summoned the heads of the majority for a dinner at the ‘Elysée, on the evening of December 12. It goes without saying that the future of the bill carried by Gérald Darmanin was on everyone’s lips during the three hours of the meeting.
The Head of State sharply cut short rumors of a possible use of 49.3 to have the immigration law adopted without a vote or of a dissolution of the Assembly. “Out of the question” to resort to one of the two options, he said to the Prime Minister, to the ministers in charge of immigration law – Gérald Darmanin for the Interior and Olivier Dussopt responsible for the Ministry of Labor – , to the leaders of the majority groups in the National Assembly and to the leaders of the Renaissance and MoDem parties, according to franceinfo. Certain invited personalities seemed more particularly targeted according to RTL which reports the reprimand of those “around the table who imagine a dissolution, while there is no reason to draw a general conclusion from the sequence”: “If some consider that it would be a good idea, I tell them make them screw up and ask them to stop.” A path that Gérald Darmanin had defended.
A conclusive CMP or abandonment of the text
Ruling out the options of 49.3 and dissolution, Emmanuel Macron, who took the immigration file in hand, affirmed before his ministers that he was betting everything on the joint joint commission (CMP) which must meet between November 18 and 19 according to Yaël- Braun Pivet, President of the Guest Assembly of France 2 this Wednesday, December 13. All representatives of the majority were therefore called upon to work so that an agreement was found in the CMP: “There is no individual success, there are only collective failures”. It is also a way of erasing the traces of Gérald Darmanin’s failure, which made the adoption of this law a personal challenge.
A call heard since this Wednesday, December 13, Elisabeth Borne and Gérald Darmanin must receive the presidents of the parliamentary groups of the majority and that of the Republicans to begin discussions. The objective is to find a compromise between a firmer text to ensure the vote of the right, without offending the MoDem or the left wing of the majority, and to increase the chances of seeing the bill adopted.
This pressure put on the members of the majority by the Head of State is all the more important as the second scenario envisaged is clear: if the CMP does not reach an agreement, then the immigration bill will be abandoned. An abandonment which would seem like a failure for Emmanuel Macron who strongly maintains, like his Minister of the Interior, that this text is necessary for the protection of the French.
Whether it returns to the Assembly or is definitively abandoned, the immigration bill must be decided on its fate by the end of the year, according to the timetable set by Emmanuel Macron. After eighteen months of debate on this most divisive text, the Head of State seems annoyed and above all determined to turn the page at the dawn of a decisive year 2024 for his mandate between the Paris Olympics and the elections European.