The Republicans are putting pressure on the Constitutional Council. Eric Ciotti’s party has thus submitted a memorandum to the Sages, who must decide next Thursday on the immigration law, in order to defend the text that the right had considerably hardened in the Senate, the political movement indicated this Friday, January 19 confirming information from Parisian. LR chose to present its own observations directly in writing to the Constitutional Council “because of the lack of will of the President of the Republic and the government to defend a law passed by a large majority in Parliament”, he underlines.
In its argument, Eric Ciotti’s party considers that the law does not contain any “legislative rider”, in other words measures which would have no link with the approved text, ruling out the possibility that the Constitutional Council could therefore revoke them. She also assures that “many of the criticized provisions of the immigration law have already been validated by the Constitutional Council in the past and have already been in force in our law”.
Provisions that “respect” EU law
The Republicans cite as an example “the reinstatement of the offense of illegal residence”, which they believe has already been declared to be in conformity with the Constitution in 2011. According to them, the same is true with “the tightening of the conditions for family reunification with a minimum duration to benefit from it” which they consider validated by a 1993 decision of the Constitutional Council. In its observations, LR also strives to demonstrate that the provisions of the immigration law “respect European Union law and are inspired by it”.
The day after the adoption of this controversial text, former Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne recognized that certain measures were unconstitutional, and Emmanuel Macron himself referred the matter to the Constitutional Council. The left also presented an appeal and a delegation of deputies from the four left-wing groups (LFI, PS, ecologists and communists) was heard on Tuesday by the Constitutional Council.