Emmanuel Macron is not throwing in the towel, despite the severe defeat suffered by his Government on Monday in the National Assembly. The French president wants to save the immigration bill, even if this inevitably means paying a high price in concessions to the conservative opposition.
Given the refusal of the lower house to discuss and process the text of the law as it had been modified by Macron’s party, the Government chose this Tuesday to convene a joint joint commission, made up of seven deputies and seven senators, to try to reach to a commitment. An eventual pact will involve, however, largely accepting the very harsh version approved by the Senate (dominated by conservatives), with more agile and rapid measures to expel foreigners in an irregular situation. On the contrary, the opening to regularization of simpapels who work in sectors with a labor shortage will be reduced to a minimum, as the Government intended.
The possibility of a government crisis is not materialized at the moment. The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, who was greatly defeated on Monday, remains in his position thanks to Macron’s explicit support. Nor does it seem that the president is tempted for now by the risky move of dissolving the Assembly and calling early elections. However, this very risky scenario cannot be ruled out in the medium term if paralysis persists due to lack of a stable parliamentary majority.
During the Council of Ministers, Macron regretted “the cynicism” of the opposition parties, which he accused of forming an alliance “against nature” with the sole objective of eroding the Executive, but without an alternative solution.
Macron’s drama is that the centrist policy that he has wanted to apply since coming to power in 2017 no longer works because his people only have a relative majority in the Assembly, where polarization is very pronounced, with a radical left and an extreme right that have strong groups.
There is unanimity among French editorialists in confirming that the policy of “en même temps” (at the same time) is running out, the catchphrase that Macron frequently repeated in his first years in the Elysée and that became the synthesis of his strategy. : neither right nor left, but a kind of pragmatic syncretism in which apparently opposite ideas had a place.
“The Government and Macron pay for their doubts, their indecisions and their contradictions,” writes Le Figaro. “Nine months after the forceps adoption of the pension reform, the Government has rediscovered how fragile it was,” says Le Monde.
An immigration law inspired by right-wing criteria would be difficult to accept by center-left sectors of Renacimiento, Macron’s party. A tear would be fatal just a few months before the European elections, which are already very difficult for them. The polls show Renacimiento clearly behind the National Regroupment (RN), Marine Le Pen’s far-right party.
The Republicans (LR, traditional right), see the opportunity in this situation to gain profile in public opinion by negotiating from a position of strength with the Macronists. LR dominates the Senate but only has about sixty deputies in the National Assembly, a powerful minority because it can be the balance. His problem is that he defends security and immigration policies that are little different from those of the extreme right.
