The same phrases have been trotted out by Macron supporters over recent hours. In their view, Monday's National Assembly motion rejecting the government's new immigration bill before it was even debated was a “denial of democracy” (Maud Bregeon, MP for the ruling Renaissance Party), an “unholy alliance” aimed at “attacking the government” … at the expense of the “French people” (Sylvain Maillard, president of the Renaissance group at the Assembly), and “nothing more than a political manoeuvre” (Agnès Firmin-Le Bodo, junior health minister).
“This majority [vote] by MPs doesn't represent the majority of the French people,” was the even bolder claim of interior minister Gérald Darmanin on TFI television news on Monday evening. Visiting the south-eastern Paris suburb of Maisons-Alfort the following morning, the minister again regretted the fact that MPs had not “wanted” to fulfil their “role”, which was to “debate and legislate”. Such arguments understandably infuriated those who have, for the past year and a half, themselves had to endure the government's own power grabs in Parliament, and especially the National Assembly, where President Emmanuel Macron does not have an absolute majority.
But while the president's supporters sought to reassure themselves by pointing out that Monday's vote was on a “motion to reject” and not a “motion of censure”, by mocking the “petty politics” of others and by attacking MPs from the rightwing Les Républicains (LR) – most voted for the rejection motion – over their “sense of responsibility”, it was in vain. What happened at the National Assembly on Monday - a first since a 1998 vote on legislation concerning civil partnerships - was a lesson in the balance of political power that the government would be better advised to take on board rather than simply brush off by attacking the opposition.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
To talk of a “denial of democracy” less than a year after the fiasco of the pension reforms is a rather risky line of attack. Even back then labour minister Olivier Dussopt had sought to explain that “the French people are more responsible than certain union leaders”. But, more than anything, that saga revealed the very personal method of dialogue employed by the Macron government, one which was summed up his way by the former general secretary of the CFDT union Laurent Berger: “There's been no building of real social democracy over the past six years.”
Frenzied use of article 49-3
To get its pension reform approved in the teeth of huge street protests, the government chose an unprecedented legislative procedure, slipping this major piece of legislation into a social security finance amendment bill, known as a PLFRSS. “This innovation is not a step in the right direction,” professor of public law Denis Baranger said at the time. “On a technical level it's a power grab, a hijacking of the rights of Parliament.” Despite that, prime minister Élisabeth Borne still ended up using article 49-3 of the Constitution to avoid a vote by MPs.
Since the start of this Parliament the prime minister has used this article 20 times, and it has now become familiar to the public. To justify this frenzied recourse to article 49-3 Macron supporters often point out that it is a “democratic tool” available under the country's Constitution. “[Article] 49-3 is not the invention of a dictator but a profound democratic choice made by General [Charles] de Gaulle [editor's note, who founded the Fifth Republic in 1958] and approved by the French people,” Élisabeth Borne said, while the president promised to use the Constitution “with stringency and respect but with determination”.
In fact, a motion to reject a bill before debate takes place is also allowed for under Parliamentary texts, in this case in the National Assembly's own rules. But because this particular motion gives Parliament power over the executive it has now come under fire from the latter. The manner in which Macron supporters are criticising its use over the immigration bill says a great deal about their attitude towards political counter-powers, checks and balances, which are described as “irresponsible” when they are actually used. That has happened today with the Parliamentary opposition, and it has also happened in the past in relation to bodies linked to civic society.
An old far-right refrain
For the last six years, and despite two consecutive face-to-face contests with the far right's Marine Le Pen, Emmanuel Macron has constantly imposed his plans. At the end of 2018 this exercise in solitary power was flung back at him like some fluorescent boomerang with the emergence of the disparate 'yellow vest' protest, the first indicator of his method's failure. “The experience of the yellow vests showed that civil society organisations were, in the end, very useful as shock absorbers for the French people's emotions,” a close ally of Macron told Mediapart during the pension reform protests.
The executive has revived such passions and tensions in recent months by imposing yet another immigration law on the public agenda - the thirtieth in four decades. Using the fight against the far right as cover, the Macron camp has in reality fuelled and legitimised its obsessions, even going so far as to discuss them quite normally with the far right's leaders. Thus one learns from L’Express news weekly that a “Macron strategist” last weekend had discussions with the head of the Rassemblement National (RN) party, Jordan Bardella, to “sound out his party's intentions”.
In order to win a majority for his immigration bill, Gérald Darmanin has for months courted the rightwing Les Républicains (LR) and used certain familiar refrains from the far right, even going so far as to praise a version of the immigration bill text voted on by the Senate in mid-November, even though it had considerably toughened up the government's own proposals. He was one of the first in the government to proclaim the link between public concern over law and order and “immigration”, another pet cause of the far right. But he has also recycled its vocabulary; having spoken of a “descent into savagery”, he recently took ownership of the notion of “anti-White racism”.
In the days leading up to the motion rejecting the immigration bill, the minister and his entourage stepped up their behind-the-scenes efforts to avoid being humiliated at the National Assembly. According to Libération newspaper, Gérald Darmanin's private office even “individually rang LR MPs, promising a brigade of gendarmes here and there”. This kind of manoeuvring throws into stark relief the attacks from the minister and others about “petty politics”. And it also shines a harsh light on those who are the truly “irresponsible” figures in this whole affair.
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- The original French version of this op-ed can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter