The day after the adoption of a motion for prior rejection of the “immigration” bill, the government wishes to convene a joint joint committee (CMP) “as quickly as possible”, the government spokesperson announced on Tuesday, December 12. , Olivier Véran, during the press report of the Council of Ministers.
Seven deputies and seven senators should meet behind closed doors to try to agree on a version of the text, part of “an approach to debate and seek a compromise between the majority and the oppositions,” declared Mr. Véran. “We are looking for this compromise because we consider that the text is important,” he reaffirmed. The executive refuses to renounce its text and will continue to defend “the balance” of the bill, insisted Emmanuel Macron.
The votes of the deputies of the New Ecological and Social Popular Union (Nupes), the National Rally (RN), and the Republicans (LR) led Monday evening to the rejection of the bill, even before the start of its examination in the Hemicycle.
The government chose to have its bill examined first in the Senate last month. Before its passage in the Assembly, the text had been tightened by the senators, notably reducing the possibilities of regularization of foreigners.
The right in a position of strength
To have an agreement in CMP, where the right is essential due to the senatorial majority, the presidential camp will have to make concessions on the easier regularization of workers in professions in tension. It is the aspect which crystallizes the opposition of LR and the RN. For “a text which must be able to find a majority in the Senate as in the National Assembly”, “the search for an agreement remains our method”, assured the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, to the President of the Republicans, Eric Ciotti.
If the CMP agrees on a text, it should then be submitted to the Senate and then to the National Assembly. In the event of failure of the CMP, the government would then have to convince deputies to find a majority in the National Assembly or take the risk of once again triggering article 49.3 of the Constitution which could expose it to a motion of censorship.
The fourteen full members of the CMP on immigration law are not yet known. But it is already certain that it will be made up of seven deputies and seven senators, each with a substitute, reflecting the political balances of the two hemicycles.
No date set
In the Assembly, this gives since the start of the legislature: three Renaissance deputies and a MoDem for the presidential camp, a National Rally (RN), a “rebellious” and a LR incumbent among the oppositions. Knowing that a group can give up its starting place to a substitute from an allied group. In the Senate, the LR are in a position of strength, with three incumbents and a senator from their allied group, the centrist Union. A Macronist and two socialists complete the picture.
The National Assembly having not adopted any text during the session, the working basis will be the text adopted at first reading in the Senate, which had largely hardened the government’s initial copy. “The Senate text will be our line. The red lines have not changed: they will be the same in the joint committee (CMP) as in the discussion of the text,” the president of the LR senators, Bruno Retailleau, informed Agence France-Presse. The president of the Republicans, Eric Ciotti, for his part promised that his parliamentarians “will defend the entire text of the Senate, nothing but the text of the Senate.”
The commission could meet in the coming days, the executive’s objective being that the measures in the bill be adopted “by the end of the year”, according to the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin. This date must, however, be set by the president of the law committee in the Assembly, the Renaissance deputy Sacha Houlié.
