Bruno Retailleau, here on October 15 in the Assembly, is traveling to the Italian border this Friday with the Prime Minister to talk about immigration.” title=”Bruno Retailleau, here on October 15 in the Assembly, is traveling to the Italian border this Friday with the Prime Minister to talk about immigration.”/> ALAIN JOCARD / AFP Bruno Retailleau, here on October 15 in the Assembly, is traveling to the Italian border this Friday with the Prime Minister to talk about immigration.
ALAIN JOCARD / AFP
Bruno Retailleau, here on October 15 in the Assembly, is traveling to the Italian border this Friday with the Prime Minister to talk about immigration.
POLITICS – We will have understood it. Bruno Retailleau’s compass indicates the milestone of 11 million votes obtained by the National Rally in the legislative elections. A score which, according to his point of view, authorizes him to push the sovereign cursor very hard, even if it means shocking even within the government on the subject of the rule of law, offering a new cacophony to the executive at the subject of the AME and to give the impression of obeying the orders of Marine Le Pen on a future immigration law announced for the beginning of 2025.
The former boss of LR senators, who has long seized the vocabulary of the extreme right, is heading to Menton and Ventimiglia this Friday, October 18, to talk (again) about illegal immigration. The presence of Prime Minister Michel Barnier for this trip aims to demonstrate the voluntarism of the executive, in the wake of a toughening observed everywhere in Europe, including at the level of the European Commission.
“Pure form” censorship?
A transalpine trip which therefore arrives at a time when the government is promising a new immigration law, even though the previous one (passed less than a year ago) is still not applied in full, and whose effects cannot be measured at this stage. Which does not prevent the Minister of the Interior from having a very precise idea of the text. “ I am not proposing anything more than what was already voted for by the majority of Gabriel Attal, once again, a few months ago. he announced Tuesday October 15 on France 2thereby emphasizing that he intended to resume the measures censored by the Constitutional Council the previous time.
According to Bruno Retailleau, the harshest measures were rejected for “ purely formal reasons “. However, if it is true that 32 provisions had been considered as legislative riders by the Sages, three measures had been rejected on the merits. Among them, the establishment of migration quotas set each year by Parliament, because they are contrary to the separation of powers (one of the pillars of the rule of law). Furthermore, the Constitutional Council has already rejected in substance, but via another channel, the harshest measures voted in the last immigration law.
« The Council confirmed that social protection does not only apply to people of French nationality, but to all people legally residing in France, rejecting the so-called “national preference” thesis. confirmed in an interview with Monde the president of the Constitutional Council, Laurent Fabius. Despite this censorship on the merits, the Republicans did not budge, like Laurent Wauquiez who denounced “ a new illustration of the coup d’état of law “, while other party figures publicly questioned the institution of rue de Montpensier.
When the RN rubbed its hands in December 2023
In view of this precedent, the desire to reintroduce into law measures already deemed unconstitutional raises questions. Unless the object is to demonstrate that the Constitution currently prevents Parliament from applying measures allegedly ” demanded by the French “. And therefore, to call into question the safeguards protecting democracy. Which is precisely what several constitutional experts feared during the examination of the immigration law at the end of 2023. “ Either the Council lets the text pass and we will say that it does not protect the rule of law, or it censors all or part and we will cry out to the government for judges », Anticipated with clairvoyance the professor of constitutional law Dominique Rousseau, quoted by AFP.
In December 2023, the RN had perfectly theorized this outcome: “ If the Constitutional Council prevents us from toughening our immigration legislation, this will prove to the French that the Constitution must be reformed. Marine Le Pen has worked extensively on this issue. This is an area in which she is identified and most competent,” assumed an advisor to the leader of the RN in the Assembly cited by The Point. However, while the Minister of the Interior recently affirmed that in his eyes the rule of law is neither “ sacred ” is ” intangible “, we can easily guess the conclusions that Michel Barnier and Bruno Retailleau, under the supervision of the RN in the Assembly, could draw in the event of further censorship by the Constitutional Council.
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