the associations determined before the examination before the Constitutional Council

2024-01-05 18:00:21
During a demonstration against the immigration bill, in Paris, December 3, 2023. MUSTAFA YALCIN/ANADOLU VIA AFP

Maintaining pressure at all costs is the mindset of opponents of the “immigration” law. Voted on December 19, 2023, the text includes, according to the executive itself, several measures likely to be censored by the Constitutional Council. Seized by the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, but also by the left-wing opposition, the nine constitutional judges must rule by the end of January on the conformity of the text. Until then, left-wing parties, associations, unions and many lawyers are trying to organize the response.

Also read the analysis: Article reserved for our subscribers “Immigration” law: measures likely to be censored by the Constitutional Council

The latter is being carried out on several fronts. Legal, first. Several “external contributions” (also called “narrow doors”) will be addressed to the Council by natural or legal persons concerned by the “immigration” law. Serge Slama, professor of public law at Grenoble-Alpes University and specialist in foreigners’ law, was the driving force behind this initiative. The academic was struck by the number of his colleagues who participated in this work, many more than usual. “It goes beyond the usual hard core”, he believes. According to him, the “immigration” law “is very poorly written, very poorly put together and will be a breeding ground for disputes and pose a lot of interpretation problems”.

These external contributions are organized by theme (nationality, international students, social protection and emergency accommodation, seriously ill foreigners, asylum, unaccompanied minors, legal disputes and detention, etc.) and have been developed by academics and association leaders. They therefore provide all the legal arguments to support censorship of the provisions in question, or even overall censorship of the text.

Hard to get everyone to agree

Another sector that is mobilizing: that of associations and unions. Forty-five of the most important organizations – among others: Attac, the Abbé Pierre Foundation, Emmaüs, the Human Rights League, France Terre d’Asile, Cimade, Oxfam, the CFDT, the CGT – denounce “a tipping point for [les] republican principles ». The signatories make an appointment before the end of January “to continue this dynamic of gathering, ask the President of the Republic to postpone the promulgation of the law, intensify and broaden the mobilization against this text and its ideology”. Problem: we do not know what form this mobilization will take. “The law is unanimously against it, hence the number of signatories. But on the modes of action, we are a little expectantconfesses Manuel Domergue, of the Abbé Pierre Foundation. Cultures are different and we are awaiting the decision of the Constitutional Council. »

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