This is the essence of any funeral ceremony. Tears are shed there in memory of the deceased. Bursts of laughter pepper the discussions of old acquaintances, sometimes reunited after many years. This March 20, 2024, Bruno Retailleau meets Alain Juppé during the national tribute for Admiral Philippe de Gaulle at the Invalides. No hilarity, but we are remaking the world. The match, too. It has been two months since the Constitutional Council dismembered the immigration law, largely rewritten under the dictation of the boss of senators LR. Sixty days do not erase the bitterness. The Vendéen has difficulty digesting the censorship of 32 articles, shot because they have no “direct or indirect link” with the government’s initial text. Except for one damn voice.
His political victory evaporated into legal limbo. He storms against this decision, a supposed obstacle to parliamentarians’ right to amend. He mentions to the “wise” Juppé a rewriting of article 45 of the fundamental law on these famous “legislative riders”. “It is difficult to clarify an already clear text,” slips the former mayor of Bordeaux. Bruno Retailleau has the feeling of finding an ally. To an interlocutor, Alain Juppé nevertheless mocked a few weeks earlier about amendments “not subject to prior analysis by the Council of State” and a bad “way of making the law”. Technician Retailleau is sent back to his law studies.
An ideological fight
The Constitutional Council gave him a second lesson a month later, by brushing aside LR’s proposal for a shared initiative referendum on immigration. The conditioning of non-contributory social benefits to five years of residence in France is considered contrary to the supreme standard. This time, for a substantive reason.
Too much is enough. Bruno Retailleau takes up his pen and begins writing an essay on “the democratic emergency”. A chapter of the Vendéen’s book is devoted to the tension between “rule of law” and “democracy”. The minister intended to warn against the advent of an “illiberal democracy” – hostile to the law and minorities – or a “democratic illiberalism”.
This second pitfall is his favorite. Bruno Retailleau would undoubtedly have theorized this “silent revolution” of the supreme courts, accused of confiscating normative power in defiance of popular sovereignty. Suspected, above all, of fueling the impotence of those in power and the feeling of “democratic dispossession” of the French. It would have crushed the “exaltation of individual rights” of constitutional and European judges to the detriment of the collective framework. “The consequence of an increasingly greater influence of an Anglo-Saxon conception of society, individualist and multiculturalist,” he confided in 2021.
“In the fog”
The dissolution of the National Assembly put this work project on hold. The literary revenge will not take place. It could be political. The new Minister of the Interior is working on a bill transposing the European pact on migration and asylum. Above all, he intends to push a Senate bill recycling the provisions censored in January 2024 for procedural reasons. On the menu: reinstatement of the offense of illegal residence, tightening of family reunification or removal of the automaticity of land rights. “Without the January censorship, this second text would not have been necessary,” the minister assures L’Express.
Here again, you will have to overcome the obstacle of rue de Montpensier. On the merits, this time. At the end of September, Patrick Stefanini went to Beauvau to talk with Bruno Retailleau. Both discuss the legal difficulties raised by new legislation. The former secretary general of Department of Immigration tells him about his work alongside Brice Hortefeux in 2007. The minister had at the time consulted State Councilor Bruno Genevois to have his law adopted, which notably authorized the use of DNA tests for candidates for family reunification.
Bruno Retailleau is faced with the same problems. He proposes reducing the waiting period before paying social benefits to foreigners from five to three years to comply with the decision of the supreme judge. “The legal services are working but it is an assessment that can only be made in the fog, because it is the sole assessment of the Constitutional Council,” he admits. Even the best informed man in France cannot unravel the mysteries of the law.
“Same text, same vote”
The political obstacle is no less. Bruno Retailleau pretends not to care. “Same text, same vote,” he told a Republican Right (DR) deputy. The analysis has the force of evidence. Renaissance and Frontist deputies dubbed his right-wing copy less than a year ago. Why would they change their minds? The story is more complex, the minister knows it. Many Renaissance deputies voted for the text out of obedience, convinced by the executive that its most stinging provisions would fall before the Sages. Emmanuel Macron himself took charge of seizing the institution. The day after the vote, Elisabeth Borne reassured the Minister of Higher Education, Sylvie Retailleau, who was angry after the adoption of a “caution” for foreign students:
“This will not pass before the Council.”
“What if it passes?”
“We will have it removed via a bill.”
A year later, Bruno Retailleau would like the trap to close on the former majority. “He was shocked by what he considered to be manipulation,” notes a close friend of Emmanuel Macron. “It’s smart of him to take parliamentarians at their word.” The latter assume. At the beginning of October, Michel Barnier brings together the presidents of the common base groups for a weekly breakfast.
The subject of immigration is put on the table. The boss of the Ensemble pour la République (EPR) deputies Gabriel Attal recalls the fractures of his group on the subject, when Laurent Wauquiez calls for their vote in December 2023. “They knew that a large part of the law would be censored”, retorts in substance the former Prime Minister. Which has already warned Michel Barnier, before the formation of the government, of his group’s reluctance to a bill labeled Retailleau. On October 16, the EPR deputy had lunch with Bruno Retailleau in Beauvau. He depicts his motley group to her. We then discuss the future law, and a possible exemption regime for foreigners at work in access to social benefits. Nothing very concrete.
“Here I am, Sarkozyste!”
To hell with these doubts. Too bad if the ex-majority is skeptical about the minister’s chances of success. “There will be no landing on our side,” warns the spokesperson for the EPR group, Ludovic Mendes. Bruno Retailleau is determined to get his horse medicine swallowed by the common base. The minister calls public opinion to witness, invokes the tightening of European legislation, and bets that a careful examination of the text will dispel doubts. “I intend to explain their concrete scope measure by measure,” he warns. An LR deputy, more blunt: “The main thing is that there is a vote. If it does not pass, everyone will know because of whom it did not pass. In the event of an election in eight months, we will say who did not vote.”
Convictions and strategies sometimes go hand in hand. Theorist Retailleau dreams of a reconstitution of the left-right divide, conducive to major ideological confrontations. Immigration is the ideal theme to breathe new life into this bipolarization. Emmanuel Macron privately detects this strategic temptation behind his legislative ambition. The central block wouldn’t resist it? Let him die of his contradictions! “It is not forbidden to make calculations,” smiles one of the president’s interlocutors. “But this intersects with what he really thinks on this subject.”
The outcome of this legislative project is very uncertain. Perhaps Bruno Retailleau will be able to submit new migration provisions to the supreme judge, his best enemy? Three of its nine members will be renewed in March 2025. He defends itself from any desire for “revenge” on the institution. “There are rules of the game, I accept them. But I keep my freedom of speech.” After the January censorship, Senator Retailleau was ironic in private about this “Constitutional Council which does not respect the Constitution”.
A few days after his arrival in Beauvau, Bruno Retailleau spoke with Nicolas Sarkozy, with whom relations were sour for a long time. This time the discussion was cordial. “Here I am, Sarkozyste!”, blurted out the new minister as he hung up. Will he be so until he finds a point of accommodation with the Sages? In 2010, the then president calmed things down with the body. “A constitutional censorship resolves less a question of substance than a conflict of competence between the ordinary legislator and the constituent power. There is no need for drama.” This is called being in charge.
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