Announced for months, contested by associations for the defense of exiles, shouted down by the left and deemed very insufficient by the right and the far right, the text that began its journey in committee in the Senate last week, was to be debated from Tuesday in the hemicycle of the High Assembly dominated by the right-wing opposition.

But against a backdrop of political and social fever after the adoption via the procedure of 49.3 of the highly contested pension reform, the executive is organizing its withdrawal on a subject deemed too abrasive to be debated immediately.

"There will be an immigration law," said Wednesday Emmanuel Macron during a television interview on TF1 and France 2 before clarifying his remarks.

"There will probably be several immigration texts and they will arrive in the coming weeks," he said.

Questioned by AFP, an adviser to the executive said that there would be "no immigration text debated in the Senate" next week as was initially scheduled.

The government and the majority are now planning a "shorter bill and several bills", i.e. texts tabled at the initiative of parliamentarians, he added.

Initially, the text defended by the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin provided both measures to facilitate the expulsion of delinquent foreigners and an integration component, in particular by a controversial residence permit in the "trades in tension".

According to parliamentary sources, confirmed by sources close to the executive, it was the president of the Senate Gérard Larcher who asked for this postponement Tuesday to Emmanuel Macron, who accepted it.

According to the same adviser to the executive, "Gérald Darmanin proposed to put in this case other vectors that will still allow to have immigration measures because it is necessary, by splitting them into several texts for example: on the one hand a bill with consensual measures, such as the simplification of the law in order to accelerate the processing of asylum applications, on the other hand, bills/parliamentary initiatives on other subjects".

Clearly, abounded another source in the entourage of the executive, "we will reorganize the bill to make it something simpler".

The Minister of the Interior met with Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne on Wednesday to decide the subject.

"Poorly crafted"

Even before the executive's choices were officially unveiled, the oppositions fell on the government project.

"This project is totally poorly crafted. I believe it does not meet the needs of the country. You can't pretend about immigration control. This text, I think he pretended, it is a text of communication, "teased the boss of the deputies LR, Olivier Marleix, on France Inter.

"There is a lot of work I think to make it presentable," Marleix continued.

His counterpart of the PS group in the Assembly, Boris Vallaud, also criticized on Public Senate "a text +at the same time +".

"It was a text that was supposed to please the right and the left, in the end it did not please anyone because, as far as I am concerned, I keep a certain number of principles that are indivisible and that it is not by cutting the salami into slices that we make it more digestible. So if the copy is bad, let them take it back, "said the deputy of Landes.

"When we see the turn of the preparatory debates on this subject in the Senate, it is wise," also welcomed on Twitter Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, president of the association France land of asylum, which had participated in consultations with the government on the text.

Last week, the senators had considerably hardened in the Law Committee the version of the text, by adopting a series of amendments that notably joined some historical positions of the far right, such as the hardening of the conditions of access to family reunification or the abolition of state medical aid, reserved for undocumented migrants.

© 2023 AFP