2024-02-13 07:37:30
The right’s response was expected after the broad censorship of the immigration law at the end of January by the Constitutional Council. The Republicans will try to submit several measures rejected by the Sages to a shared initiative referendum (RIP), a procedure which has never been successful so far.
“It is now a question of giving voice to the French people so that they can decide directly by referendum,” asserts the right in the explanatory memorandum of this proposed law which paves the way for this RIP. This type of referendum, enshrined in the Constitution since 2008, is a procedure which has not yet been crowned with success, the conditions for it to succeed being difficult to overcome.
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The project must first bring together 185 parliamentarians, then pass the demanding filter of the Constitutional Council within a month. Then, in nine months he will have to obtain the support of 10% of the electorate, or nearly 5 million people, before the French can finally decide.
The first surmountable obstacle
With 133 senators and 62 deputies, almost all of whom voted for the text on immigration in December, LR should be able to overcome the first obstacle of the 185 parliamentarians needed.
The Republicans are also convinced that their bill, made up of five articles, falls well within the referendum domain. According to them, it falls under “the social policy of the nation within the meaning of the first paragraph of article 11 of the Constitution”.
The right recalls, moreover, that the amendments it had introduced to toughen the law on immigration were censored by the Sages not on the merits, but as “legislative riders”, because they were judged to be unrelated to the draft law. initial law.
AME, social benefits
Among the measures selected for their RIP, the establishment of a “duration of residence condition” for the payment of certain social benefits to foreigners in a legal situation.
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LR also wishes to reinstate the abandonment of State Medical Aid, a system allowing foreigners in an irregular situation to benefit from access to care. The right, however, did not introduce into its text either the loss of nationality or the questioning of land rights which “would not fall within the scope of article 11”, indicates a party source.
The establishment by Parliament of the establishment of migration quotas and the tightening of the conditions for family reunification do not appear in their bill either.
This response from the right comes as the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, visiting Mayotte on Sunday, announced a constitutional revision intended to eliminate land rights on the island in an attempt to stem uncontrolled immigration.
“First stage”
The Republicans had severely criticized the censorship of the Constitutional Council, their possible candidate for the Elysée in 2027, Laurent Wauquiez, denouncing a “legal coup d’état” and their boss Eric Ciotti deploring “a democratic hold-up”.
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The right, however, recalls that these measures were adopted “very widely” by Parliament and believes that a “very large majority of French people were in favor of them”. The LR took this initiative while the centrist group, an ally of the right in the Senate, tabled a bill at the beginning of February which takes up most of the measures of the immigration law censored by the Constitutional Council. An initiative which has little chance of succeeding, the presidential majority being unfavorable.
The right, however, emphasizes that this RIP only constitutes a “first step” and that a constitutional revision will then be “indispensable (…) to allow France to regain control of its destiny”.
The only RIP authorized by the Constitutional Council, against the privatization of Aéroports de Paris in 2020, had only gathered 1.1 million supporters at the end of nine months of collection.
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