French senate president wants constitutional reform, referendum on immigration

Real immigration policy cannot be achieved without reform of the French Constitution, President of the French Senate Gérard Larcher (Les Républicains) told Le Parisien on Saturday.

While the government is preparing a law on immigration, the right-wing opposition is keeping up the pressure on a subject close to its heart: “Without constitutional reform, there will be no real migration policy and therefore no successful integration policy,” said Larcher.

This proposal aims to organise a major referendum on immigration, as the right and the far-right (Rassemblement National) have been requesting for several months. The current Constitution limits referendums to “the organisation of public powers” and “reforms relating to the nation’s economic or social policy and the public services that contribute to it”.

However, to impose “requests for asylum outside French territory”, “quotas”, or to attack the “management of family reunification”, as the head of the Senate points out, a constitutional revision is essential, and permitted by Article 89.

The Republicans also intend to enshrine in the Constitution the possibility of “derogating from the primacy of treaties and European law […] when ‘the fundamental interests of the Nation’ are at stake”.

Last May, Labour Minister Olivier Dussopt said that holding such a referendum was “contrary to European integration” and would “single out and stigmatise France’s position within the European Union”.

For his part, President Emmanuel Macron made it clear to Le Figaro this summer that he would refuse to bow to pressure from the right on immigration, and is opposed to any revision of the constitution. “Any reform that takes us out of Europe is ineffective, the problem is European and we are not an island,” said Macron.

“We have always been a country of immigration and we will continue to be so”, he said.

Gérard Larcher was keen to warn the president that “we are opening the door to the far right if we continue to mislead the French on this issue”. “He will bear the consequences”, he said.

(Hugo Struna | EURACTIV.fr)