By welcoming theOcean-Vikingwe opened “a new breach”laments Gérard Collomb in an interview with Pointpublished on Sunday, in which he explains for the first time that his differences with the Head of State over the ” migration issues are the reason for his resignation in 2018.
Beyond the emotion on the fate of people, the reception in France of the Viking Ocean marks a turning point in the po… https://t.co/Ub457MkTRZ
« (…) I want to warn about the fundamental issues that are at work in the case of theOcean-Viking. This is already what prompted me to resign from the Ministry of the Interior, in 2018, even if I have not spoken about it until now”said the former interior minister, who had already spoken on Friday on Twitter of one “turning point in immigration policy” française.
France agreed on Thursday to welcome the humanitarian ship and its 234 passengers rescued off the coast of Libya, after twenty days of wandering at sea and at the end of a standoff with Italy which gave rise to a crisis. policy between Rome and Paris.
« Four years agorecalls Mr. Collomb, migration issues were already extremely important. The European Commission had launched the idea of “controlled centres” to receive migrants. Shortly after, the Heads of State, meeting especially to deal with migratory problems, resumed this project, Emmanuel Macron showing himself to be one of the most favorable to it”. The idea, he continues, was to create the centers in question in Tunisia, Morocco and Albania, but the three countries refuse to do so.
“We will not be able to make them leave again”
“Emmanuel Macron then proposed to open such a center either in Toulon or in Marseille, and he asked the prefect at the time, Pierre Dartout, to work there. I was Minister of the Interior at the time, and I was totally against this project.says the former mayor of Lyon. “All my teams show me, in fact, that given French and European legislation, if we welcome migrants to this type of centre, we will not be able to get them to leave. »
“I refuse that we enter this spiral; Emmanuel Macron insists”reveals the former executive of the Socialist Party, who rallied to the leader of the Republic on the move in 2017. The 1is October 2018, he traveled to Marseille to attend a ceremony in tribute to two young girls killed a year earlier by a Tunisian in an irregular situation who should have been expelled.
“I then think, ‘I don’t want this to happen again.’ And if I allow the installation of this control center to take place, I will later feel responsible for acts that could lead to the death of people. This is why, two days later, I decided to resign. »
“Call for air”
“If I had said that at the time, I would have seriously harmed Emmanuel Macron. If I had spoken before the presidential election, my intervention could have reversed the result of this election, and Marine Le Pen had been elected. That’s why I shut up”specifies Gérard Collomb.
To justify his resignation, the Minister of the Interior had explained that he wanted to run for the Town Hall of Lyon again during the municipal elections of 2020 at the head of an LRM-MoDem-UDI list, which will only come in third position.
“By welcoming now theOcean-Viking, we open a new breach, creating a precedent. For me, this can only encourage the networks of smugglers for whom migrants are a source of considerable earnings. (…) One can be moved by all these cases individually, but to stick only to a reaction of sensitivity, one reinforces the problem more than one solves it, by creating a call for air “, he judges, asking Mr. Macron not to lock himself into this policy. “If he continues, next time it will no longer be moderate politicians who will have to deal with immigration problems”citing the example of Sweden, where the far right became the second political force in September.