France is unexpectedly slipping into a government crisis. In a vote in the Assemblée Nationale, the larger chamber of the national parliament, on Monday evening, all the main opposition parties surprisingly came together and, for diametrically different reasons, scuttled Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin’s immigration law before the debate in the Palais Bourbon could even begin. 270 MPs voted for the Greens’ motion to reject it, 265 against it. This means that the controversial law, which went far too far for the left and not far enough for the hard right, is off the table for now. When and whether there will be a new one is completely unclear.
This outcome is particularly bitter for the 41-year-old Interior Minister himself. Darmanin had calculated that a triumph with his immigration law, which was also called “Loi Darmanin” in the media, would pave the way for the next presidential election in 2027. He admitted quite frankly that he would then be happy to succeed Emmanuel Macron, who is no longer allowed to run after two terms in office.
For months, Darmanin toured the television studios and promoted his law in the knowledge that many French people in polls were calling for a tougher approach to dealing with migration. The aim was also to dispute the main topic with the extreme right and its leader Marine Le Pen.
He wanted to please both the right and the left. This balancing act fails
For a triumph, however, he needed many votes, ideally from both sides. He promised the right that the expulsion of foreigners who have problems with the justice system would be tightened, as well as a restriction on family reunification and the abolition of social benefits for asylum seekers. In turn, he promised the left that the government would give papers to foreigners without identity documents who worked in employment-intensive sectors, such as construction or domestic help.
He once said, “I’m bad with the bad and nice with the nice.” Anyone who integrates, learns the French language and vows to love the French flag is welcome in France. Everyone else: probably not. In the Senate, the smaller chamber of Parliament, where the conservatives have a majority, he played the hardliner. Well, when the law came to the Assemblée Nationale, he weakened it again.
The balancing act failed and in the end everyone was dissatisfied, both the right and the left. For Darmanin, the rejection of the “Loi Darmanin” is a frontal disavowal. As soon as the result of the vote was known, the French news channels asked: “Can he remain a minister?” Darmanin’s career seems to have been compromised at least in the long term, which shouldn’t displease everyone even within his own ranks: The former Republican was always considered a kind of clone of Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France from 2007 to 2012. Sarkozy was always his model: he wanted to be like his role model make the leap to the top of the state as interior minister.
The blow from parliament also hits Macron head-on
And if everyone now looks at Darmanin, one of the most important, formative and polarizing figures in the French government: the “gifle”, the slap in the face, in the Assemblée Nationale also represents the greatest political defeat to date for Macron’s parliamentary majority and thus for the President personally since he has been in office – since 2017. In his first term in office, Macron’s camp had an absolute majority in the Chamber of Deputies, so things were easy. Since 2022, he has only governed with a relative majority and often has to resort to the crowbar, the constitutional article “49-3”, to get laws through parliament. 19 times already. The government also used “49-3” for pension reform.
Darmanin had hoped that he would be able to do it without this forcing, and his triumph would have been correspondingly great. Now he failed before the debate and shortly afterwards drove to the President at the Elysée to submit his resignation. But Macron rejected the resignation.