Elisabeth Borne asked Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin on Tuesday evening to relaunch “consultations” to present “in July” a bill on immigration to the Council of Ministers, with a view to parliamentary examination in the fall. , announced the entourage of the Prime Minister, confirming information from the Figaro.
This is a new reversal on the part of the executive. The head of government had indeed affirmed on April 26, when presenting her roadmap for the continuation of the five-year term after the pension crisis, that there was currently “no majority to vote for such a text”, of which she had therefore postponed the presentation to the fall.
The government tries to keep the initiative
In any case, even with this new boost, a possible reform would not be discussed before the fall. But this allows the government to try to keep the initiative on this explosive subject while on the right, the Republicans have announced their intention to file two bills by the summer.
During a meeting at Matignon on Tuesday evening, “the Prime Minister asked Gérald Darmanin, in constant contact with Olivier Dussopt and Franck Riester”, the Ministers of Labor and Relations with Parliament, “to lead in the coming weeks consultations to propose a strategy allowing the adoption of effective measures and able to bring together the presidential majority, ”explained those around Elisabeth Borne. “These consultations will last a month. The aim is to present a bill in July for measures to be considered in Parliament in the autumn,” it added.
Priority of the “hundred days”
The Minister of the Interior had already presented a text, and its examination was initially scheduled for the end of March in the Senate. But President Emmanuel Macron had first announced his postponement and assured that it would be divided into several texts, before returning to these remarks by pleading for a major law in “a single text”, “effective and fair”.
In mid-April, in front of his troops gathered at the Elysee Palace, the Head of State had even made it one of the priorities of the “hundred days” he decreed to relaunch his five-year term. “If we don’t do immigration and work” before July 14, he hammered according to participants, “that means we won’t do it” at all. But his Prime Minister had recorded the political impasse in the following days.