“Those in the majority who insisted on the social aspect of the text will have to mute it.” It is with a certain gentleness mixed with benevolence that this Renaissance deputy from the right confirms it to us: the immigration bill still unleashes passions. This member of the “Solféri-No” WhatsApp group, bringing together around twenty Macronist elected officials who trained with the Republicans, also demonstrates that times have changed. The assassination of Professor Dominique Bernard in Arras on October 13, perpetrated by an Islamist terrorist born abroad, significantly changed the national climate and the importance of this Immigration bill. Long relegated to the background by the lively debate around “tensioned professions” residence permits, the security aspect has now largely taken precedence over the “integration” dimension of the text. This is a paradigm shift which will not displease a certain Gérald Darmanin in his quest for LR votes to wrest a majority in the National Assembly. “Some on the left might want to distinguish themselves from LFI, but I’m not sure that Gérald will seek these votes there,” quips one of his colleagues in the government.
The Minister of the Interior has a clear plan: achieve a vote on a text co-constructed by the government and LR senators to twist the arm of right-wing deputies. Thus, the tenant of Beauvau assured Wednesday October 18 that he would endorse the “modifications” made to the text in March by the Senate Law Commission. On the menu: tightening the criteria for family reunification or even the transformation of state medical aid (AME) into emergency medical aid (AMU). And it’s not over. Beauvau is considering a new turn of the screw, with the idea, for example, of making adherence to a radical ideology a reason for expulsion. A real tango.
We almost forget one detail: the Renaissance group in the Assembly. This may well be more homogeneous since the disastrous legislative elections of 2022 – the only benefit to have lost a hundred deputies between the two legislatures… -, it is still prey to tremors when it comes to immigration. The stigma of the Asylum and Immigration law of 2018, the first psychodrama of the previous five-year term, have not completely disappeared: “The balance is very fragile, it is a real subject of division within the group and therefore a real point of vigilance”, judges a minister who has long shared these benches in the hemicycle. But for now, the deputies of the presidential party have no other choice but to wait. Worse, to suffer, dependent on the choices of LR senators and the resulting compromise with Gérald Darmanin. Parliamentarians, like nature, abhor a vacuum, and this uncomfortable in-between should not give rise to fantasies, concerns… and therefore tensions. Meetings between Renaissance elected officials and the government have multiplied in recent days as the timetable accelerates: the general rapporteur of the text to the National Assembly, Florent Boudié, was received in Matignon to take stock of the potential red lines Macronist troops; Gérald Darmanin will be present at the next meeting of the Renaissance group to put them in tune and in battle order. “The moment is so focused on the discussion with the senators that we will have to have, one day, a very specific discussion with the government. If people are worried, we have to talk about it,” warns the one of the group’s executives.
“The SOUL is a totem”
Gérald Darmanin’s attempts to seduce the senatorial right and his taste – increasingly pronounced – for transgression have raised a few voices within the Macronist battalion. “We are in the process of distorting the initial balances to make concessions to a political family which is keen on its referendum project and will not vote on the text,” warns Loiret MP Caroline Janvier in particular. The transformation of the AME into “AMU”, validated by Gérald Darmanin, leaves several Renaissance elected officials in suspense, even in incomprehension. A shrinkage of the device? Why not, but to what extent? What proportions? The extensive redaction, proposed by LR in the Senate, would be “unacceptable” for the president of the Law Commission Sacha Houlié or for the left wing figure Stella Dupont. The same goes for a minister who asserts his social democratic line: “Darmanin is sick. He wants to win votes on the right with that and, if that fails, be able to blame the leftist Macronists. L’AME, it’s a totem, and has been for six years, it’s the last thing you can shrink. The group will never accept it…”
And yet. The idea is making headway in the ranks of the Renaissance group where a majority of deputies do not say they are closed to the idea of cutting through the fat of this system: to make the conditions of access to the AME more restrictive, while like the care basket. “It is only out of dogmatism that some refuse to look into this type of detail. It is legitimate to want to work on a revisited AME,” says the deputy for Moselle and ex-socialist Ludovic Mendes. More generally, in this marathon which has everything of a fool’s game with LR, the Macronist troops seem to be evolving, step by step, in the wake of the Minister of the Interior: “There has been a very strong shift: colleagues those who are not very enthusiastic about this law now consider that it does not go far enough,” believes Caroline Janvier. An executive from the group, a specialist on the subject, adds: “I note that many colleagues from the left wing would be ready to accept a much higher level of firmness, especially after the events in Arras, to safeguard the presence of article 3.”
Damn article 3! These few lines aim to regularize illegal immigrants exercising a “job in tension”. Red rag from the right; totem of the majority. How to reconcile opposites? The executive is exploring the regulatory route to calm the ardor of the LR and satisfy its own flock. What does the bottle matter, as long as we get drunk! The boss of the Renaissance group Sylvain Maillard is not opposed to it. Neither does Olivier Dussopt, nor this other minister from the left: “If article 3 can be implemented by regulation, OK. But guarantees are needed.”
Drop a few crumbs to the LR without crossing the red lines
In the majority, not everyone is ready to swallow the pill. For symbolic reasons, first. This article embodies the balance of the text, a self-proclaimed model for overcoming divisions. “If we give up, that means that the right is holding the pencil,” fears Loiret MP Caroline Janvier. For its practical reasons, too. The president of the Law Commission Sacha Houlié judges that a legislative provision is essential so that the foreign employee can make his request for regularization alone, and not under the patronage of his employer, as provided for in a 2012 circular.
Another pitfall of the regulatory route: the issuance of the title would no longer be automatic but left to the discretion of the prefect. The mechanism would be a source of unequal treatment. “I am opposed to individualization. It is a red line for me,” warns Maine-et-Loire MP Stella Dupont. Sacha Houlié detects another risk: “The government is asking the prefects to reduce legal and illegal immigration. This discretionary power is the only way for the prefect to do so, the rest is beyond his competence.” A start of resistance? Insubordination? Ludovic Mendes, like several of his colleagues, tempers this ersatz revolt: “Article 3 is a red line for less than ten people.”
Evolve without becoming distorted. Drop a few more crumbs to the LR without crossing the red lines. This is the issue of the moment for Macronist troops who do not yet have a say and who fear, above all, reliving the trauma of the pension reform. Being fooled once happens again (and again…), but not twice. The more the weeks pass, the more the political context hardens, the more the executives of the Renaissance group fear a cavalcade of their best enemies, the Republicans. In the slump that is emerging, it is indeed a motion of censure voted by a majority in the Assembly which would be the worst epilogue. Whatever the outcome of the negotiations between Gérald Darmanin and LR, the majority deputies are opposed to the use of article 49.3: “Better to go to the vote and lose, we will have better to tell, more arguments to oppose if it happens like that, estimates an executive of the group. With a motion of censure, we would no longer have a text and no more government. In short, we will have won everything…”