Édouard Philippe came to the aid of his camp accused of compromising with the National Rally on Tuesday. The former Prime Minister defended the immigration bill, a “compromise between the majority and LR” according to him.
The president of the Horizons party, a former member of LR who joined Emmanuel Macron in 2017, “does not believe at all” in a compromise with the National Rally, he said in the Quotidien show on TMC. “The RN is not in the compromise that was discussed. He is not in the Senate. There are two RN senators in the Senate,” he noted.
“I accept the compromise”
“I consider that this compromise text does not modify the essential elements in my eyes of the republican pact” and that “it creates instruments that we need. So I accept the compromise,” insisted Édouard Philippe.
“I have always said that I was in favor” and even “extremely attached to State Medical Aid” (AME). “I don’t like measures to strip nationality.” But “I do not believe that even with measures that do not completely delight me, this text deserves to be rejected,” he argued.
Philippe admits a “discomfort” in the majority
Asked about the deposit required from foreign students, which he had just defended at the very moment when Emmanuel Macron declared that it was “not a good idea”, Édouard Philippe replied: “This is the problem with the compromise texts “. “But what do you want me to tell you? (…) Me, I would not have fought over it” but “I accept the fact that the deputies of my group voted for it”.
If he admits a “discomfort” in the majority, the former Prime Minister estimated that “the Parisian political world, the parliamentary world, the media world that goes around… We will say that he loses his temper, sometimes, and that he overreacts.” “My intuition is that a fairly large majority of French people agree with the objectives that were defended with this law, in my opinion in the balance that it tried to maintain, and probably in the compromise that we reached “, he added.
Furthermore, to the question: are you a Macronist? Édouard Philippe defined himself as “a loyal member of the majority, with a freedom of tone to which (he) values”. Not a Macronist, then? “No… There you go, I created my party.” ” No. I support the majority, I respect the president, I support the president, and I agree with him on this text. So “.