The French Government “pays attention” and believes that the judges validate the “integrity” of the text
The Constitutional Council of France has annulled 32 articles of the immigration reform promoted by the Government and which added in its last amendment concessions to the extreme right, which means rejecting more than a third of the text, including there are key aspects such as the tightening of requirements for foreigners to receive aid or to be able to reunite their families.
The magistrates have determined that some aspects are not related to the substance of the bill that the Executive proposed and that the National Assembly initially rejected. President Emmanuel Macron did not have enough of the majority that usually supports him, which showed the internal fissures, but had to turn to the support of the Republicans and the National Group for the final approval.
Already in the hours following this approval, the then prime minister, Elisabeth Borne, questioned the constitutionality of some of the articles introduced in the final phase. The magistrates have concluded this Thursday that some of them are not related to the substance of the bill, which has led to total or partial annulments — among which the imposition of migration quotas is in question — , reports Franceinfo.
The French Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, has affirmed in a first reaction that the Government is “paying attention” to the rejection of “numerous” articles, attributing it to the fact that “parliamentary procedure” was not followed. In fact, he believes that the Constitutional Council has validated “the integrity of the Government’s text”.
“Never before has a text provided for so many resources to expel criminals and so much demand for the integration of foreigners,” he wrote on the X social network account.
The reactions of the political parties
The leader of the extreme right, Jordan Bardella, has regretted the “coup” of the judges, for which he also blames Macron, and has criticized that the Constitutional Court has called into question “the harshest measures”. “The immigration law was born dead. The only solution is the referendum,” he said, referring to a common claim of the party.
The president of the Republicans, Eric Ciotti, has also criticized the judicial decision, since he considers that the judges “have taken politics more into account than the law”. For the conservative leader, both Macron and the left “expected” this sentence, and he pointed out that “a constitutional reform is more indispensable than ever to preserve the destiny of France”.
On the opposite side is the leader of the Socialist Party, Olivier Faure, “happy” with the sentence and critical of the Government’s orientation towards “historic” positions of the extreme right, while the head of the parliamentary group of La Francia Insubordinate, Mathilde Panot, has called for the complete withdrawal of the reform and has remarked that “racism is not constitutional”.
