The French government is facing a political crisis after Health Minister Aurélien Rousseau offered to resign in protest at a hardline immigration bill.
Emmanuel Macron’s ruling centrist party was divided and soul-searching on Wednesday after a tough new immigration law was approved by parliament, but contained so many hardline measures that far-right leader Marine Le Pen claimed it was an “ideological victory” for her own anti-immigration platform.
Rousseau immediately offered his resignation in protest at the law, but Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne did not say whether she would accept it. It was unclear whether other ministers would offer their resignations.
The bill was originally intended to show that Macron could take tough measures on migration while keeping France open to foreign workers who could help the economy in sectors where jobs are scarce.
His interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, had argued that the bill would “protect the French” and that the government needed to take tough measures on immigration to stem the rise of Le Pen’s anti-immigration far-right National Rally, which is now the largest opposition party in parliament and polls first ahead of next year’s European elections.
But after opposition parties refused to even debate the immigration bill in parliament last week, a compromise text was quickly drawn up by a special parliamentary committee. As a result, the centrist government put forward a much tougher, right-wing bill that restricts access to social benefits for foreigners, tightens the rules on foreign students, introduces immigration quotas, makes it harder for the children of foreigners born in France to become French citizens and stipulates that dual nationals convicted of serious crimes against the police could lose their French citizenship.
Within Macron’s centrist grouping, many MPs voted against the bill or abstained, revealing deep divisions particularly on the left of Macron’s own centrist Renaissance party. Sacha Houlié, a key figure on the left of Macron’s party who had chaired the special committee on the law, voted against it.
Le Pen, leader of the anti-immigration, far-right National Rally party, said her party would vote for the bill, calling it an ‘ideological victory’. Far-right MP Edwige Diaz described the bill as ‘undeniably inspired by Marine Le Pen’.
A key part of the bill was to make some social security benefits for foreigners conditional on having spent five years in France, or 30 months for those with a job. The left-wing opposition said this amounted to Macron copying the controversial central manifesto pledge of decades of far-right politics under Jean-Marie Le Pen and his daughter Marine Le Pen: the notion of “national preference” in which benefits and housing should be “for the French first”.
Elsa Faucillon, the Communist MP, said the government was using the same words and ideas as the far right and going further than Giorgia Meloni in Italy.
It is ‘the most regressive bill in the last 40 years for the rights and living conditions of foreigners, including those who have been in France for a long time’, some 50 groups, including the French Human Rights League, said in a joint statement.
The government argued that the bill also included liberal measures such as the regularisation of undocumented workers in sectors with labour shortages, including construction, health and care, and hotels and restaurants.
Borne wrote on X that it was “a necessary, useful law” that the French had wanted. She said it was “efficient and in line with Républicain values” and that the “general interest” had won.
The bill was passed by deputies from Macron’s party voting alongside the right-wing Les Républicains. Although Le Pen’s far-right MPs also voted in favour, the government had enough votes without them.
Opposition politicians on the left pointed out that when Macron was re-elected for a second term in 2022, he admitted that many voters had voted for him not for his own ideas, but to keep out the far-right ideas of his opponent Marine Le Pen.
Cyrielle Chatelain, a Green MP, told parliament there was a feeling of “shame and betrayal” that Macron had instead brought in the ideas of the far right with this bill.
