The government announced this Sunday, October 13, a new law on immigration, the examination of which could begin “at the beginning of 2025” in Parliament, just one year after the previous text on the subject which had fractured the majority in the National Assembly. “There will be a need for a new law”, in particular to allow “the extension of the period of detention in administrative detention centers” of illegal foreigners deemed dangerous, government spokesperson Maud Bregeon said on BFMTV.
One of the options envisaged is to increase the maximum period of detention from 90 to 210 days, which is currently only possible in relation to terrorist offences. “We are not stopping ourselves from thinking about other arrangements,” added the spokesperson, judging that there should be “no taboo in terms of protecting the French”. The executive wants this text to reach Parliament “early 2025”.
The previous law, promulgated on January 26, was the subject of very tense debates in Parliament and within the former presidential majority. The Macronist camp was able to get the text voted on thanks to the abstention of National Rally deputies. Migration “quotas” set by Parliament, reinstatement of the offense of illegal stay, deposit required from foreign students in France to plan their return, measures restricting family reunification: the Constitutional Council had censored large sections of the text.
The Sages had thus rebutted the main additions that the former presidential majority had conceded to the right and in particular to the current Minister of the Interior, Bruno Retailleau, then head of the LR senators and great architect of the hardening of the text. In total, 32 of the 35 rejected provisions were considered “legislative riders”, 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 are, this time, rejected on their merits.
“Bases for the new project”
The measures censored by the Constitutional Council “will serve as the basis for the new immigration bill”, a government source told AFP. “Some could be changed and there will be additions.” Maud Bregeon assured that the government would discuss with “all parliamentary groups”. “We are not going to seek the support of the National Rally,” she nevertheless affirmed, while Marine Le Pen, leader of the RN deputies, made the absence of a new law on immigration a “red line” that could trigger government censorship.
At the end of September, deputies from Laurent Wauquiez’s Republican Right group tabled a bill to extend the detention period of illegal foreigners deemed dangerous after the murder in Paris of a young student, Filipina. The new immigration law promises new very heated debates in a tense parliamentary context, with a National Assembly where the fragile Barnier coalition does not have a majority.
The left is already in full swing. “We have a government with this Bruno Retailleau who is giving us an immigration law as a pledge to the far right. All this is sewn with white thread,” reacted the first secretary of the Socialist Party, Olivier Faure, interviewed on Franceinfo.
“Here we go again for weeks of saturation of the public debate around the themes of the extreme right, added the deputy Benjamin Lucas (Generation. s). This government and those who support it are arsonists, collaborators of lepenism”. The president of the deputies of the Ecologist and social group, Cyrielle Chatelain, deplored “a legislative accumulation which solves nothing” and has already “destroyed the lives of many people”.