Experienced friends are great. Especially when they have been Ministers of Immigration and Integration. It is 2021, a few months before the start of the internal primary of the Republicans. Michel Barnier, who has completed his European mission as chief negotiator for Brexit, is now maturing his Elysée dreams. In his Commission offices at the Berlaymont, which he still has for a few weeks, he invites the MEP and former minister of Nicolas Sarkozy, Brice Hortefeux.
The time has come for global reflection on the program, and for the preparation of flagship measures. The enlargement to the sovereign especially, in a right-wing congress where the demand for authority is a priority. For the European, an ecologist before his time, former minister four times, of the Environment, Foreign Affairs and Agriculture, informed discussions on immigration are more than welcome. “We must restrict access to nationality,” the European parliamentarian advises him. The person concerned listens, and concludes: “I have started thinking about migration issues, and my proposals will be bold.”
“He didn’t have that regal image”
July 28, 2021. A month has passed since his declaration of candidacy, while Michel Barnier reveals, in the columns of Figarohis flagship measure. “We need a moratorium on immigration,” he writes, in order to freeze the flow “for three to five years.” The candidate proposes to preserve this measure from international commitments, and therefore from the legal bodies of the European Union and the Council of Europe – he speaks of “finding [une] legal sovereignty” – by setting up a “constitutional shield”, subject to referendum. The RN cries plagiarism, the LR pouts – the promise is “hard to achieve”. Stupor, on the other hand, in the European microcosm. The European Commission then reminds us that France must respect the treaties and the preeminence of the European Court of Justice. The MEPs, for their part, feel cheated, like Nathalie Loiseau: “As European Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier defended tooth and nail the primacy of the Court of Justice of the EU and the ECHR. Or at least we hope so. As a candidate in a primary, would he deny what he defended?”
This was followed by proposals to eliminate state medical aid, the systematic expulsion of foreigners sentenced to prison, the abolition of birthright citizenship in Mayotte, and the banning of the veil in public spaces. In politics, supposed “audacity” is not always a guarantee of success. He ultimately bowed out at the gates of the final. “He had to force the point a little, it was imperative. It wasn’t really his subject: he came third, if he hadn’t talked about it at all, it would have been more complicated for him,” an LR member analyzed afterward.
September 5, 2024, on the steps of Matignon. He officially becomes Emmanuel Macron’s fifth head of government, through laborious negotiations. The question is puzzling attentive ears: which Michel Barnier is he presenting to his audience? The pure LR with radical positions on migration issues, or the fine Brexit negotiator, capable of listening and consensus? The attempt at balance leans to starboard when he sets out the priorities of his government action. “I am thinking of access to public service, school will remain the government’s priority […]I think about security on a daily basis, I also think about controlling immigration.” A resigning minister, present in the audience during the handover ceremony between the new Prime Minister and Gabriel Attal, frowns. And slips her concerns to the wife of the new occupant of Matignon: “I hope he is aware that he must deal with all groups, and quickly send messages to the left, otherwise it will not last as long as taxes.” Message received, assures Isabelle Altmayer.
But these last five years in France have taught Michel Barnier to flourish his vocabulary. TF1, the next day, first interview. “There is still the feeling that the borders are sieves and that migratory flows are not controlled.” Richard Ramos, Modem MP, ticks: “In my opinion, he is already in a kind of cohabitation with Marine Le Pen.” The latter and her troops, masters of the destiny of the Savoyard since the New Popular Front announced an immediate censure of his government, want to raise the stakes. And have prepared a bouquet of measures, around – among other things – proportional representation, security and immigration. “It is undeniable that Michel Barnier seems to have, on immigration, the same observation as us”, the boss of the RN MPs congratulates herself in The Sunday Tribuneand calls – “why not?” – for the implementation of his measure on the immigration moratorium.
“He crashed into the Overton window”
How far away it seems, this November 17, 1985, at the Forum of the RMC radio. RPR deputy of Savoie, Michel Barnier judges it “a little dangerous” that the question of immigration becomes the central theme of the electoral campaign of 1988, while the National Front is rising rapidly. “What is true of the economy is also true of society. The future does not belong to nations that close themselves off and curl up.” But discreet positions do not deceive when, in his book published that same year – Long live politics! -, the person concerned speaks of “certain areas of relegation” as real “foreign concessions”. “By what right can we treat with contempt the weariness or exasperation of those who live in cohabitation with certain foreign populations?”, he wondered. Those who have known him for a long time and worked alongside him assure us, however, that the man has never been too keen on these issues. “It has never been a subject of concern that seemed major to me in his way of working”, argues a former companion. A political friend, she, has even “never discussed immigration with him”! “That’s not really the image I have of this man”, she continues. The Savoyard right is not that of the Paca region, a question of context, argues a member of parliament for Les Républicains. “I think he has rushed into the Overton window”, the one opened by Eric Ciotti. “In fact, Michel Barnier never really had a regal image,” adds an LR bigwig.
An evolution through experience, analyses Patrick Stefanini, Mr. Immigration of the Right: “It was not his area of expertise. But the European Union, when he was Commissioner, experienced an unprecedented migration crisis. Michel Barnier then negotiated Brexit, which everyone knows was not without its immigration phenomena in the separation between the United Kingdom and the EU.” And he continued: “He realized that the British people’s questioning of this challenge was not a cyclical accident.” In 2021, Michel Barnier never stopped asserting that in this matter, “if we don’t change anything, there will be other Brexits.”
In Macronie, where since 2017 we have struggled to come up with a consensual doctrine on the subject of immigration, the less right-wing are vigilantly awaiting the general policy speech of the new Prime Minister. Without too many illusions. “If he maintains the proposed line of 2021, he will have no support from me. He is an LR, he does not come from here, and as it stands, we know what he is capable of: he can say very harsh things that do not correspond to our values”, snaps Ludovic Mendes, Renaissance MP. “But we are not going to repeat Barnier’s program, sighs Emilie Bonnivard, elected representative of Savoie, very close to the new Prime Minister. On the other hand, we want real legal tools to act on a pause on immigration.”
“We will see if, after chasing the hard base of the Sarkozystes, he will do the same with the RN”, adds Modem MP Richard Ramos, who questions, with his colleagues, his radical positions in terms of immigration. “Was it out of opportunism, out of conviction?” Ironically, Hanane Mansouri, a newly elected MP under the Ciottist banner, was, in 2021, at the head of the “Young People with Barnier”. At the time, she had found his anti-immigration position sincere. This week, she sent him a message of congratulations. A question of politeness.
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