The decree of attributions was published this Thursday in the Official Journal: the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin recovers in the new government the portfolio linked to the right of asylum and the integration of foreigners. For two years, the Minister of the Interior shared the migration file with Marlène Schiappa, who was not renewed as Minister in charge of Citizenship, delegate to Gérald Darmanin Place Beauvau. Darmanin was in charge of immigration, border control and the fight against illegal immigration; Schiappa on the reception of refugees, their integration and the subject of naturalization.
Under the government of Elisabeth Borne, the Minister of the Interior therefore takes sole control of the entire file, as was the case under the government of Édouard Philippe, during the first five-year term of Emmanuel Macron. “The Minister of the Interior prepares and implements the government’s policy in terms of internal security, public freedoms, territorial administration of the State, immigration, asylum, integration of foreigners in France , the fight against separatism and road safety”, lists the text published in the Official Journal.
“It is competent, in compliance with the powers of the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons, in matters of the exercise of the right to asylum and subsidiary protection and the conditions of reception of the persons concerned”, specifies the decree. He is also “in charge of naturalizations”, a file on which Marlène Schiappa had been very active, particularly at the height of the Covid-19 crisis, when she had initiated a procedure to facilitate access to French nationality for thousands of foreign workers on the “front line” during the epidemic.
The disappearance of the government of the minister in charge of the reception of refugees has aroused, in recent weeks, the concern of the associative world at a time when France is receiving tens of thousands of displaced persons fleeing Ukraine, in parallel with the operations of evacuation from Afghanistan that have been going on since the Taliban took power.