Europe 1 with AFP 9:30 p.m., November 08, 2021

Sunday, Arnaud Montebourg supported the idea of ​​blocking private money transfers to countries that refuse to repatriate nationals targeted by a deportation order from French territory. Monday evening, the presidential candidate admitted that this measure had aroused "the stir among (his) own friends". 

The presidential candidate Arnaud Montebourg regretted Monday evening having "poorly expressed" and a "misunderstanding", after his controversial remarks in favor of blocking private money transfers to countries that refuse to welcome their nationals targeted by a deportation order. "I wanted to target the States, I do not want to touch these families who work hard, send money to their families on the other side of the Mediterranean," he insisted on LCP.

"I felt a lot of emotion, a lot of emotion, in my own friends, in my family, some practice this support, this mutual aid across borders. (...) I got yelled at by people. that I like. I understood that I had expressed myself poorly, "said the former Socialist Minister of the Economy. "I wanted to say: now we will have to hit the wallets, but from whom? States first of all, it is the States which are in question. In the search for a diplomatic report it is necessary that the States move" , says Arnaud Montebourg. "I would say that it is a misunderstanding (...) A presidential election, it is made to seek solutions and to discuss them, not to put dust under the carpet", according to him.

"A somewhat forbidden debate"

"The President of the Republic has proposed the restriction of visas, I have the impression that it does not work ... There are no proposals on the subject, we must find one", considers Arnaud Montebourg.

"I wanted to recall a debate which is a little unsinkable, which regularly returns to all presidential elections, it is a somewhat forbidden debate, it is the debate of the search for effective solutions so that convicted people who do not 'do not have French nationality and who will never have seen their criminal behavior returned to their countries once they have served their sentence, "he added.

Sunday, Arnaud Montebourg had proposed to block "all transfers" of money, "11 billion which pass through Western Union", as "as long as one does not have a reception of cooperation".

"These private money transfers are a windfall for these countries and today we need to say: enough is enough", he declared in the LCI / RTL /

Le Figaro

grand jury

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His statements sparked a series of indignant reactions from the left.