To remain at the Ministry of the Interior, Bruno Retailleau, received on Friday evening by the new Prime Minister François Bayrou, sets his conditions: maintaining the same course on immigration. A foil for the PS.
Will Bruno Retailleau remain at the Ministry of the Interior, as he hopes, under a Bayrou government? The LR strongman was the first political official that François Bayrou, just appointed Prime Minister, received on Friday evening, just after his handover of power with Michel Barnier. And his first puzzle. Because the tenant of Beauvau asked him for “guarantees” to participate in government, particularly on immigration, his entourage told AFP. While precisely its presence and its policy in this matter are red rags for the PS, a fragile ally essential to avoid censorship, for whom “the continuation of the same policy will have the same sanction”.
Before their meeting, the entourage of the resigning minister had assured that he was going to ask “be confirmed in the roadmap that was his” under Michel Barnier, citing “the drastic fight against illegal immigration” and the “reduction of legal immigration to what is strictly necessary”. Points according to him “non-negotiable”. Bruno Retailleau also wishes to have the “means” to continue to “fight against insecurity and in particular drug trafficking”.
The presence of Bruno Retailleau would embody LR's support for the Bayrou government. The Macronists also asked for its maintenance, like the President of the Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, who welcomed Sunday on RTL a “man of convictions, of value. We share the same. And considered that it would be appropriate for him to remain in office. While for the left, Retailleau acts as a foil: the incarnation of an assumed conservative liberal right. “Bruno Retailleau who leads the policy of Bruno Retailleau, it is not possible for us”, estimated Boris Vallaud, leader of PS deputies, Monday on LCP. To see if the resigning minister could agree to renounce the new immigration law that the Barnier government had promised before the censorship, in favor of a simple, more consensual sovereign reform, such as the proposed senatorial law against drug trafficking, concocted by a PS senator and an LR.
François Bayrou will have to deploy treasures of diplomacy to reconcile these opposites. To form his government, he will hold a series of meetings this weekend, starting with the President of the Assembly and the President (LR) of the Senate, Gérard Larcher.
