‘Immigration’ law: ‘The Joint Committee is a trap the government set for itself’

LThe Dec. 19 vote on the “immigration” law will be a turning point in Emmanuel Macron’s second five-year term and, more broadly, in national political life. The government achieved its “victory” in the National Assembly only at the end of the process, when its text was rewritten by Les Républicains (LR) and voted down by the National Rally (RN).

Great illustration ” at the same time “Interior Minister Gerald Darmanini’s bill, which included a “progressive” component and a “repressive” component, moved toward a significantly tougher system that is likely to win favor with the right and far-right. how did we get there

We are in a minority government situation after the June 2022 elections. This is a very simple and somewhat brutal political reality: a “relative” majority like the Renaissance is not a majority at all. The government governs only under the influence of “rationalized parliamentarism” (49.3 and others…) and hyper-presidentialism. The pension reform episode in the spring demonstrated this fading.

“Immigration” law reflects this deterioration, but in a sequence where the government is locked into the institutional tactics that have led it to a dead end.

The first mistake was to force its way through the legal committee of the National Assembly. Although the text largely reworked by the Senate – and thus by Bruno Retaile’s LR group – was accepted by the government, the latter allowed its own relative majority to “open up” it to a large extent. This could only enrage the senators. On the part of the Assembly, this exposed the government to the reality of its political situation. It is therefore very fragile relative to the majority.

RN’s kiss of death

On the subject of tension within the Renaissance itself, immigration was what had to happen: the rejection motion was passed thanks to the opportunistic joining of all the opposition. This is where the second mistake was made: the choice of the Joint Committee (CMP) to achieve the adoption of the text.

The aim of the CMP is to arrive at a consensus text, starting from two different texts voted on in each assembly. However, in this case only the Senate voted for the text. The purpose of the waiver is to ensure that all deliberations are completed before any vote is taken. In CMP, only the senator’s text was on the table.