“The joint committee on the “immigration” law is a trap that the government has set for itself”

2023-12-20 16:25:50

The December 19 vote on the “immigration” law will mark a turning point in Emmanuel Macron’s second five-year term and, more broadly, in national political life. The government only achieved its “victory” in the National Assembly at the end of a process where its text was rewritten by Les Républicains (LR) and voted on by the National Rally (RN).

Excellent illustration of ” at the same time “, the bill from the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, which included a “progressive” component and a “repressive” component, slid towards a much more rigorous system, likely to win the approval of the right and the the extreme right. How did we get there ?

Since the June 2022 elections, we have been in a minority government situation. It is a very simple and somewhat brutal political reality: a “relative” majority like that of Renaissance is not a majority at all. The government only governs under the influence of “rationalized parliamentarism” (49.3 and others…) and hyper-presidentialism. The pension reform episode in the spring showed this unvarnished.

Also read the decryption: Article reserved for our subscribers “Rationalized parliamentarism”, this tool of the Fifth Republic which aims to strengthen the executive, is less and less tolerated

That of the “immigration” law reflects this worsening, but in a sequence where the government has locked itself into an institutional tactic which has led it to an impasse.

The first mistake was to pass by force in the law committee of the National Assembly. While a text largely reworked by the Senate – and therefore by Bruno Retailleau’s LR group – had been accepted by the government, the latter allowed its own relative majority to “unravel” it to a large extent. This could only anger the senators. On the Assembly side, this exposed the government to the reality of its political situation. That, therefore, of a very fragile relative majority.

The RN’s deadly kiss

On a subject generating tension within Renaissance itself, immigration, what was supposed to happen happened: a motion to reject was passed thanks to the opportunistic conjunction of all the oppositions. This is where the second mistake was made: the choice of the joint committee (CMP) to achieve the adoption of a text.

The purpose of a CMP is, starting from two divergent texts voted on in each of the assemblies, to arrive at a consensual text. However, in this case, only the Senate had voted on a text. The purpose of a motion to reject is to end all discussion before any vote. In CMP, only the senatorial text was on the table.

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