“The short story will perhaps remember that the “at the same time” died on December 11 in an overheated Hemicycle”

2023-12-12 13:00:05
The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, at the podium of the National Assembly, December 11, 2023. JULIEN MUGUET FOR “LE MONDE”

” Bullshit ! », had confided the secretary general of the Elysée, Alexis Kohler, at the start of the school year, in front of a visitor, regretting that this explosive text had been projected into the atmosphere. Four months later, it has just… exploded in the face of the majority: Monday, December 11, the National Assembly rejected the bill “to control immigration and improve integration”, even before its examination in session, opening a political crisis. A final twist for a cursed text, which has repeatedly changed form, nature and timetable, a mutating object revealing the impasses of the moment, since Emmanuel Macron lost the absolute majority more than a year ago.

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Originally presented as balanced, this text – unveiled in the fall of 2022 by two ministers, Gérald Darmanin (interior) and Olivier Dussopt (work) – was to embody both the “firmness” (facilitated expulsions) and“humanity” (regularization of undocumented immigrants working in professions in shortage). The first part was intended to rally the voices of the right, and the second to give pledges to the left.

Instead of satisfying everyone, this balancing act convinced no one, the Les Républicains (LR) party immediately refusing to vote for the text if it was not expunged of its provisions concerning regularizations, while the supporters of the left wing of the majority assured that they could not vote for a repressive text stripped of its social component. Supposed to embody “at the same time”, DNA of Macronism, this text illustrated its exhaustion, consecrating the resurgence of the right-left divide.

In the spring, Emmanuel Macron sensed the danger. A week before the examination of the bill, he proposed that it, once again postponed, be “cut out” in two, in order to make the right vote on one text, and the left on another. But, under pressure from the President of the Senate, Gérard Larcher, the head of state gave up and announced, a month later, a single, major law.

Untenable “big gap”

Faced with an impossible challenge – to rally the maximum number of right-wing votes without losing those of the left wing – Mr. Darmanin – let go by Mr. Dussopt, more and more evanescent as the text became more right-wing – became agitated all out, convinced that he could find a legislative path. He began by endorsing the hardening of the text under the leadership of the senatorial right, before supporting its refocusing in the Assembly; everything seemed to suit him, as long as senators and deputies voted in the end. The ace.

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