2023-12-19 06:47:31
During a demonstration against the “immigration” bill held at the same time as the meeting of the joint committee, in Paris, on the evening of December 18, 2023. GEOFFROY VAN DER HASSELT / AFP
A new dike is falling. And a new step in the normalization of far-right ideas has already been taken. The seven deputies and seven senators meeting on Monday, December 18, in a joint committee (CMP) on the immigration bill have still not found an agreement, with discussions stalling on the question of social benefits. They preferred to suspend their work overnight, to resume Tuesday morning.
Read also: “Immigration” bill, live: the work of the joint committee is interrupted until Tuesday 10:30 a.m.
The current text, coming from the Senate, plans to establish a condition of seniority or work on the national territory for non-European foreigners in a legal situation, before they can access certain non-contributory social benefits − family allowances, assistance personalized housing allowance (APL), disabled adult allowance. An ideological break with social protection law resulting from Preamble to the 1946 Constitution.
The subject crystallized tensions within the CMP all evening, the majority wanted to exclude APLs from the newly packaged benefits for foreigners, while Les Républicains (LR) wanted to include them. But in its quest for an agreement at all costs with the right, after the vote, Monday December 11, of a motion to reject the text in the Assembly, the executive has already bent to condition family allowances, a measure defended for years by the far right. “It’s an ideological victory for my political family”welcomed National Rally (RN) MP for Var Laure Lavalette, Monday evening, on BFM-TV.
Also read the interview: Article reserved for our subscribers Green MP Benjamin Lucas defends the rejection motion: “The process of toughening the immigration text was underway”
Radicalization of ideas
In 2022, Marine Le Pen purely and simply wanted to reserve family allowances “exclusively for the French”. She proposed making other benefits, including APL or disabled adult allowance, conditional on five years of full-time work for foreigners. An application of the “national preference” at the heart of the National Front program for forty years, when the concept was first presented during the legislative elections of 1986.
Beyond the RN, it has now been several years since the right has taken up these theses for inspiration. In 2017, LR’s presidential candidate, François Fillon, planned to “make access to the main social benefits conditional on two years of legal residence in France”. A sign that ideas are gradually becoming more radical, in 2022, the right-wing candidate, Valérie Pécresse, had increased this deadline to five years in her program. “Little by little, a kind of national preference is becoming the norm”analyzes Brice Teinturier, Deputy Managing Director of Ipsos.
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