Eric Ciotti must not be superstitious. On January 8, the President of the Republicans (LR) approved in an interview with JDD government pension reform. We know the rest: a torn party and wounds still open. It is in the same weekly that, on Sunday May 21, the deputy of the Alpes-Maritimes, the boss of the LR group in the Assembly, Olivier Marleix, and his counterpart in the Senate, Bruno Retailleau, detailed two bills on immigration. With a clear slogan: “Stop mass immigration.” All right! A proposed constitutional law aims to derogate from European law or allow the introduction of migration quotas. An ordinary law reforms state medical aid, restricts jus soli and regulates foreigners’ access to social protection.
The government, which is preparing its own text, has been warned. “For us, it’s this or nothing”, thunders Olivier Marleix. And there is no question of dubbing a residence permit for jobs in tension, a device provided for in the first version of the executive’s project. “It’s not negotiable”, slice Eric Ciotti. The right is not in a logic of negotiation. She summons the executive to approve her counter-project. “It’s a unilateral exercise, close to the letter to Santa Claus,” smiles a centrist senator. Unsurprisingly, the government opposed on Sunday evening an end of inadmissibility to LR’s proposals.
need unity
The right is hardly surprised by this reluctance. The main thing is elsewhere. His project is first and foremost a communication exercise. LR presents a united face, far from the psychodrama of pensions. Unlike economic and social subjects, immigration is an internally consensual subject. The staging in The JDD – the three tenors on the right posing together – illustrates this concern for gathering.
Eric Ciotti knows how much his approval of the pension reform has blurred his image as an opponent of Emmanuel Macron. By showing the royal muscles, LR highlights his differences with a head of state who is uncomfortable with the theme of immigration. The government must compose a motley majority? Republicans are united. The executive hesitates on the calendar and the content of its text? The right has a turnkey proposal. “We say to the government: ‘If you hesitate and prepare a half-goat, half-cabbage text, you will find us on your way'”, summarizes the general secretary of LR, Annie Genevard.
The RN cries out for looting
In the midst of an existential crisis, the right is looking for markers of differentiation with Macronism. To be intractable on immigration is also to justify its raison d’être. “This theme is one of the last dikes that separate them from the majority, notes a senator. If they voted for the immigration text, the National Rally would say: ‘Macron-Ciotti, same fight.'” The far right will not say so . Rather, it cries out for looting. On social networks, members of the RN pinpoint the supposed borrowings of LR from Marine Le Pen’s program. A “shameless copy-paste”, fulminates the deputy RN Jean-Philippe Tanguy. This is the whole difficulty of loosening a vice: what one gains in singularity on one’s left, one risks losing on one’s right. And play a zero-sum game.
The intransigence of the right is finally jeopardizing the government’s project. Elisabeth Borne announced new “consultations” to present a text “in July”. But the quest for a compromise between the majority and LR seems impossible, so much a gap separates the two camps. It’s hard to imagine Eric Ciotti and the president of the Law Commission, Sacha Houlié, agreeing on a common text. The right even brandishes the threat of filing a motion of censure in the event of recourse to 49.3 to pass this law. On the LR side, we are already wondering about the strategy of the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin: “If he draws from our PPL [propositions de loi] to resume arrangements, he can bet on the fact that we will not remain united”, notes a deputy. The passageway is increasingly narrow.