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New French Prime Minister Michel Barnier has yet to form a coalition government, and his potential allies are already divided on key issues – the least of which is immigration policy.
Appointing Michel Barnier as prime minister was one thing. Securing a stable coalition government is another.
In his first week of office, Barnier has met with a series of political leaders from the centre and the right, hoping to bring them all under the same umbrella coalition government and agree on a shared set of policy priorities.
However, cracks have already surfaced within Emmanuel Macron’s centre-right camp over the issue of immigration. These disagreements have just started to emerge, and it will take all of Michel Barnier’s negotiating skills to smooth things over so a government can see the light of day.
A nod to the far-right
First, Barnier will need to play Mr Nice Guy with the far-right Rassemblement National (RN).
With 142 seats in the National Assembly out of 577, with the left union opposed to any right-leaning government whatsoever, the RN holds a kingmaker position. They are set to have full discretion over whether to support a vote of no-confidence that could make the government fall or abstain and give Barnier a chance.
The prime minister has so far given them a clear nod by putting the topic of immigration – the RN’s main issue – on top of his priority list.
In a TV interview last week, he compared French borders to “sieves”, warning that “migratory flows are not under control.” A few days later, on the sidelines of a meeting with his own Les Républicains (LR) political family, he vowed to “control” immigration “with “rigour and tenacity”.
Barnier is no stranger to a hardline stance on immigration. Once an LR primaries candidate ahead of the 2022 presidential election, he had introduced an immigration “moratorium” in an effort to “put an end to the unconditional regularisation of undocumented migrants.”
A “constitutional shield”, so he argued then, would further free the country from abiding by rulings from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
Among other ‘immediate’ priorities of the time, he had called to “drastically reduce” family reunification, “facilitate deportations”, put an end to free medical aid for undocumented migrants, and reform asylum laws.
Fast forward three years and the RN could not be more pleased.
“It’s undeniable that Michel Barnier seems to have the same position as we do on migration,” far-right RN parliamentary group President Marine Le Pen told weekly La Tribune Dimanche last week.
She has agreed to give his government a chance rather than vote him out outright.
Splits in the centre
On Thursday (12 September), Barnier also received confirmation from his political family they would throw their support behind him on the very condition he applied for a “right-wing programme”, meaning “more security [and] less immigration”, LR parliamentary group President Laurent Wauquiez said.
But LR numbers have dwindled in the National Assembly, from 112 seats in 2017 to 47 today.
So Barnier is compelled to court Macron’s centre-right troops, where divisions on immigration policy abound.
“When we met him, Michel Barnier confirmed that he was not going to create an immigration ministry,” Frédéric Petit, French MP for Germany, Central Europe and the Balkans from the pro-Macron centre party Mouvement Démocrate (MoDem) told Euractiv, addressing a rumour that had made rounds over the past few days.
MoDem have so far said they would support Barnier’s government as long as it is “balanced” both in terms of ministers’ political affiliations and their roles, Petit warned. “We can’t only have LR leaders in key ministerial roles,” including Defence, Home Affairs and Economy.
And nothing remotely close to an immigration minister will be accepted, either.
Concerns over Barnier’s immigration priorities are all the more palpable within Macron’s Renaissance party ranks. “When it comes to migration policy, the vibe is not very good [within the party],” Renaissance MP Ludovic Mendes told Euractiv.
A migration expert, he is very concerned that some of his own group are veering to the right: “When I hear colleagues talk about cultural insecurity [allegedly created by irregular migrants], I find it hard. These views are those of the far-right […]. This difference of views could undermine the unity of the group.”
Former PM Gabriel Attal, now president of the Renaissance parliamentary group, has made clear that “no majority can be found without [them]” but has fallen short of giving clear red lines on issues as sensitive as migration policy.
Mendes is adamant that there should be no further legislative measures on curbing immigration beyond implementing the December 2023 Immigration bill – a bill so contentious it is still seen by experts as one of the most repressive anti-immigration legislative files in years and was hailed by Le Pen as an “ideological victory”.
Renaissance heavyweights, including former industry minister Roland Lescure, have also said they would be “vigilant” not to agree on a coalition deal that “panders to the far right”.
But other Renaissance MPs have a radically different take and welcome Barnier’s tough-on-immigration stance.
“A number of proposals made by Michel Barnier [during the 2021 LR primaries] actually aim to respond to reducing migration flows,” Renaissance MP Charles Rodwell told Euractiv earlier this week.
Rodwell, alongside his party counterpart Mathieu Lefèvre, holds the strategic role of co-rapporteur for the 2025 budget for immigration and has already laid out a series of proposals, including reinforcing border checks, increasing the number of detention centres in the country, and “combating fraud”, that resemble Barnier’s past proposals.
Ultimately, Barnier can quickly find himself in a bind: he will have to adopt an immigration policy that is tough enough to receive the tacit consent from the RN and his own LR party while managing expectations from centre-leaning MPs.
He told the press he would have a government by next week. That is not very long left.
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The post France’s Barnier walks on eggshells in agreeing new immigration policy appeared first on Energy News Beat.
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