Less than a year after the vote on a controversial immigration law, Michel Barnier’s government announced on Sunday October 13 that it wanted to introduce a new text on the subject. “There will be a need for a new law”, in particular to allow “the extension” of “administrative detention” of illegal aliens deemed dangerous, declared on BFMTV government spokesperson Maud Bregeon. A proposal already announced by Michel Barnier during his general policy speech at the beginning of October.
In the previous law, carried by the former Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin and adopted in January 2024, a certain number of provisions of the text had been censored by the Constitutional Council. The Sages had thus rebutted the main additions that the Macronist camp had conceded to the right, in particular to Bruno Retailleau, then powerful boss of LR senators and great architect of the hardening of the text, today Minister of the Interior.
A basis for the new bill
In total, 32 of the 35 rejected provisions were considered legislative riders, that is to say without sufficient connection with the initial bill. A formal reason which does not prejudge their substantive conformity with the Constitution. Nothing therefore excludes them from being proposed in the new text. Nor that they can be rejected on their merits. The measures censored by the Constitutional Council “will serve as the basis for the new immigration bill”, a government source assured AFP. “Some could be changed and there will be additions.”
Among them are the migration “quotas” set by Parliament, the reinstatement of the offense of illegal stay, the return bond for foreign students, and even measures restricting family reunification. These measures would be in addition to the minister’s desire, already criticized by part of the majority, to tighten by circular the criteria for regularizing certain undocumented immigrants or the scope of State Medical Aid (AME).
In her response to Michel Barnier’s general policy declaration, Marine Le Pen demanded that the Prime Minister “put back on the agenda, from the first quarter of 2025, a restrictive immigration law, incorporating at a minimum the provisions censored by the Constitutional Council. The president of the RN Jordan Bardella welcomed the announcement of this new law, seeing it as proof that “nothing can be done without us in Parliament”. Among former ministers, including Gabriel Attal and Gérald Darmanin, some criticize these attempts at a new law. It must be “totally” applied, the former Minister of the Interior declared on France 2, recalling that there are “still many implementing decrees to be taken”.