The new French government announced on Sunday that it plans to introduce a new immigration law to parliament in early 2025, just a year after the heated debates sparked by the previous text.
Government spokesperson Maud Bregeon told BFM television that “a new law will be needed,” primarily to “extend the administrative detention of illegal immigrants deemed dangerous awaiting deportation.”
Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau signaled last week that the new French government wants to extend the maximum duration of administrative detention for illegal migrants to 210 days.
The duration of detention in administrative detention centers, originally set at ten days in 1993, was extended in 2018 to “exceptionally” 90 days, and in terrorist cases to 210 days, or about seven months.
“We are not closed to thinking about other provisions,” added the spokesperson, who believes that “there can be no taboos when it comes to the protection of the French.”
According to the plans of the executive branch, the proposal could come before parliament in early 2025.
This new immigration law could spark further heated debates in parliament, where Prime Minister Michel Barnier’s center-right coalition has only a relative majority.
The left has already expressed outrage at the proposal, with Olivier Faure, leader of the Socialist Party,
calling the new law “a promise to the far right,” which Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Rally, did indeed request from the new government.
As a result of the July 7 parliamentary elections, the National Assembly has become tripartite with 11 factions. Barnier’s government is supported by the presidential camp, the centrists, and the center-right Republicans, while the other two factions, the left that led the elections but was left out of the government and the sovereignist right National Rally in the opposition, can jointly bring down the government at any time.
Since 1980, thirty-two laws have been passed in France regarding immigration and the integration of foreigners. The most recent law, which came into effect on January 26 following heated debates and imposed stricter rules, had 35 of its 86 articles removed entirely or partially from the regulations by the Constitutional Council for formal reasons on December 20, 2023. These were primarily the tightening measures resulting from an agreement between the previous majority government and the right-wing.
The nine judges removed from the new regulations, among other things, the introduction of quotas based on the Canadian model, which would have set an upper limit for the number of economic migrants admitted to France over the next three years, deemed unconstitutional the tightening of access to social benefits, which made a distinction between EU and non-EU citizens, and did not support the tightening of family reunification requirements, nor did it require foreign students to deposit a bond for covering the costs of their return trip.
However, the original proposal of the government, which rests on two main pillars, remained in the law: a tougher approach to foreign offenders and facilitating their expulsion, as well as legalizing the situation of foreign workers working informally in sectors facing labor shortages after individual evaluation by the prefects
and without the prior consent of the employer, permits for work and residence can be given to the hundreds of thousands of individuals in such situations.
Like Interior Minister Michel Barnier, who is known for his hardline stance on migration, the new government also includes members from the center-right Republicans, and the initial statement as minister – in which he stated that “immigration is not an opportunity” and regretted not being able to organize a referendum on the topic in France – has sparked heated debate within the government ranks. Following the Prime Minister’s program speech, Marine Le Pen requested the government to introduce a new immigration law in early next year to restore measures that were deleted by the French Constitutional Council from the law adopted last December.
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