“A new immigration law will be needed to adapt a certain number of provisions,” said Maud Bregeon, spokesperson for the Barnier government, this Sunday on BFMTV. The executive wants this text to reach Parliament “early 2025”.
A text in Parliament for early 2025
“There will be a need for a new law,” said Maud Bregeon. One of the options envisaged is to increase the maximum period of detention from 90 to 210 days, which is currently only possible in relation to terrorist offences. “We are not stopping ourselves from thinking about other arrangements,” she added. “There must be no taboo when it comes to protecting the French,” she ruled.
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The executive hopes that this text will reach Parliament “at the beginning of 2025”, i.e. only one year after the promulgation of the previous law on the subject, which had been the subject of very tense debates in Parliament as well as within the former presidential majority. The Macronist camp was able to get the text voted on thanks to the abstention of National Rally deputies.
The return of censored measures
Migration “quotas” set by Parliament, reinstatement of the offense of illegal residence, return bond for foreign students, measures restricting family reunification or restricting land rights…Several measures requested by the Republicans had been censored by the Constitutional Council.
At the beginning of October, Prime Minister Michel Barnier seemed to rule out the possibility of a new text in such a short time frame. “We have just legislated”, “we are going to apply the rules”, there will be “possible progress but within the framework of the current law”, he declared on France 2.
But the pressure was probably too much. Externally, with the National Rally which threatened to trigger government censorship if a new bill was not presented. Internally, with the Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau, taking a very hard line on the subject, who called for legislation in particular to extend administrative detention periods.
The measures censored by the Constitutional Council “will serve as the basis for the new immigration bill,” a government source said this Sunday. “Some could be changed and there will be additions.”
Do not “seek support from the RN”
Maud Bregeon assured that the government would discuss with “all parliamentary groups” and would “not seek the support of the National Rally”. The new immigration law in any case promises new heated debates in a tense parliamentary context, with a National Assembly where the fragile Barnier coalition does not have a majority.
The left is already on a roll. “We have a government with Bruno Retailleau who is giving us an immigration law as a pledge to the far right. All of this is sewn with white thread,” reacted the First Secretary of the Socialist Party, Olivier Faure, on franceinfo. “Here we go again for weeks of saturation of the public debate around the themes of the extreme right,” added MP Benjamin Lucas (Génération.s).
The president of the deputies of the Ecologist and social group, Cyrielle Chatelain regretted “a legislative accumulation which solves nothing” and has already “destroyed the lives of many people”. Thirty-two laws on immigration and foreigners have been adopted since 1980 in France, according to the Museum of the History of Immigration.