We should not be fooled by the apparent calm of the Senate. Nor by the rather sober presentation of the immigration bill by Gérald Darmanin in the Chamber. Monday at the podium, the Minister of the Interior said he was “open to discussion to co-construct a firm, fair and effective text”. “What will count,” he insisted, “is not the postures, the future majorities, it is the effectiveness in responding to the French demand for authority.”
The sparse benches of the right did not prevent the minister from sending a few signals to the Republicans, hoped-for allies and whose vote is essential, by greeting Senator François-Noël Buffet, author of a report on the immigration from which Gérald Darmanin was largely inspired. Going so far as to conveniently “plead guilty to plagiarism”. No, we should not let ourselves be fooled by these usual politenesses. Because beneath the veneer, and despite the three rejection motions tabled by the left and calmly dismissed, discussions are going well.
In recent hours, the negotiations have even intensified. Monday morning, before the debates opened in the Upper House, the group presidents of the presidential majority gathered around Élisabeth Borne and Gérald Darmanin. Confident, the latter delivered the executive strategy to the Palais du Luxembourg, where the entire text must be examined before the end of the week. Objective: find a compromise on Article 3 which provides for the regularization of illegal immigrants working in so-called “shortage” professions. A measure against which the right is headstrong but which its allies, the senators of the centrist Union (UC), support.
For several weeks, the two components of the senatorial majority have been negotiating around this precise point in order to find a landing that would allow the adoption of a toughened text, as a whole. A compromise that the President of the Senate, Gérard Larcher, calls for. In recent days, centrists have worked on drafting an amendment that would “lighten” this article. Without success, for the moment: the boss of the LR group in the Senate, Bruno Retailleau, said it again in the columns of Le Figaro on Monday: “This amendment goes in the direction of a relaxation of the regularization criteria, and we, we we want to strengthen them.” The centrists, playing the role of interested conciliators, do not “despair of finding an agreement”, says Philippe Bonnecarrère, one of the rapporteurs of the text. “Bruno Retailleau seems quite rigid, but it’s not certain that he will hold. Gérard Larcher will try to isolate him,” analyzes an LR advisor.
In the Assembly, a right-wing deputy muses: “I have already observed Bruno Retailleau give a very tough speech in the past and end up behaving like a good senator by finding ways of passage.” But the entourage of the leader of the LR senators assured it again on Monday afternoon: we must “absolutely not” count on the right to give this “way of passage” the name of this amendment carried by the UC .
The dialogue is therefore far from over. Monday evening, during a dinner, those responsible for the text from the right and the center all gathered around Gérard Larcher, Bruno Retailleau and Hervé Marseille, the boss of the centrist group. Objective: to advance discussions on the subject while Gérald Darmanin has increased one-on-one meetings with LR senators in recent days. “He does hand sewing. He has put on his beautiful Santa Claus costume and is handing out the sweets. And since senators have a reputation for being greedy… It works,” confides a friend of the Luxembourg Palace.
Furthermore, several LR senators no longer hide their annoyance with their boss’s very firm position. “Bruno Retailleau is in the minority, in a corner. He does not even have a majority to delete article 3. In the end, he will not have a choice: at least half of our group is in favor of the Marseille amendment,” an LR parliamentarian believes. A figure that is nuanced by this other internal source within the group: “Half, I don’t think. But I’m not sure that Retailleau will hold everyone together.” According to our information, two scenarios await the examination of the text in the Senate: “Either the discussion on article 3 results in an agreement by Tuesday, or we decide to postpone its examination until the end of the week to leave more time time. And prove that, on the firmness side, the government and the majority agree on almost everything,” anticipates a tenor of the senatorial majority.
