2024-02-13 19:59:40
If the Republicans wish to make this RIP on immigration a political sequence, this is a first step for them. LUDOVIC MARIN / AFP
The meter indicates less than 27,000 signatures and doesn’t really run anymore. “Have you had enough of uncontrolled immigration? », asks the Les Républicains (LR) party on its website, since October 31, 2023. The response – positive – from the French was in no doubt for Eric Ciotti, but the initiative went under the radar. Three months later, the president of LR proposed a shared initiative referendum (RIP) to take up part of the measures censored by the Constitutional Council on the law relating to immigration.
In private, some elected officials are choking. How to obtain the 4.8 million signatures necessary (10% of the electorate) when barely a third of the members signed the famous petition? A quick calculation shows the audacity of the approach. Several deputies also regret having learned of the initiative through an “urgent” message from Figaro, fell on the evening of February 12, at the same time as the grouped e-mail with the 13-page text entitled “Proposed law reforming access to social benefits for foreigners”.
If the Republicans wish to make this RIP a political sequence, this is a first step for them. Eric Ciotti keeps repeating it: a constitutional revision remains « indispensable (…) to allow France to regain control of its destiny”. This obstinacy on this subject gives the impression of a party which is going round and round on immigration, when the right also seeks to exist on themes such as work, housing or agriculture, more recently.
Read the decryption: “Immigration” law: additions, toughening, censorship… all the changes to the text, from the initial draft to the final version
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Pass the filter of the Constitutional Council
The result, however, seems a foregone conclusion: no RIP has resulted in a referendum since its inclusion in the Constitution in 2008. Initially, the project must obtain the signatures of 185 parliamentarians, a priori a formality for the formation which has 133 senators and 62 deputies. The next hurdle is higher: passing the filter of the Constitutional Council. In the entourage of the president of the LR, they say they have good hope of overcoming this obstacle if the wise “judge in law and not in politics” and to praise a text “very legally solid” written jointly by Emmanuelle Mignon (in charge of the project within the party and former chief of staff to Nicolas Sarkozy at the Elysée) and ex-MP Guillaume Larrivé, who became an influential advisor to Eric Ciotti.
The Republicans are convinced that their proposed law (composed of five articles) falls well within the referendum domain, and falls, according to them, “the social policy of the nation within the meaning of the first paragraph of article 11 of the Constitution”. This is why they did not introduce into their text either the forfeiture of nationality or the questioning of land law, because they are incompatible with the scope of Article 11. “It is an offensive that is at once legal, political and democraticdeclares to Figaro Eric Ciotti. For the first time, the French will be able to be consulted on immigration. »
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