French President Emmanuel Macron has lashed out at the heads of France’s opposition parties who refused his invitation to participate in a second meeting on Friday aimed at breaking the deadlock in parliament. His opponents say they doubt the sincerity or effectiveness of the effort.
Macron invited the heads of the National Assembly’s 11 political parties for a closed-door meeting in the suburb of Saint-Denis, north of Paris, as the follow-up to a first round of talks in August.
Three of them – whose parties represent nearly half of opposition lawmakers – have said they will not attend.
“I think it is a major political fault on the part of these leaders,” Macron told journalists Thursday in Switzerland, where he was on a state visit.
Referring to the idea of holding a referendum on immigration, which would require a constitutional amendment, he added: “The absence of a working group on these constitutional reforms is absolutely disgraceful.”
Disagreement over immigration bill
The meeting is planned just days after the Senate, the upper house of the French parliament, passed a tougher version of the government’s proposed immigration bill.
The legislation would, among other things, offer a path to legalisation for undocumented immigrants who work in sectors that are having trouble recruiting, such as the service industry or construction.
That measure is strongly contested both by the conservative Republicains and the far right, and the government is considering a deal to harden the language in the bill that would be voted on in the National Assembly – the lower house.
But such a compromise will run into conflict with the left.
In declining Macron’s invitation, Socialist Party leader Olivier Faure told Public Senat that he did not want to be party to the deal on the immigration bill.
Debates should be in parliament
Faure questioned the usefulness of Friday's meeting, where he said the left was invited to participate so that the President could show there was some kind of consensus, “but there has never been consensus”.
These debates and discussions should be held in parliament, he said: “I believe in democracy, I believe in the fact that there are places where we can vote.”
Manuel Bompard, head of the hard-left France Unbowed, which has 75 deputies in the National Assembly, will not participate in the meeting either.
The party called the meeting a “communications exercise”, and instead will “continue to bring our proposals to the parliament”.
Neither left nor right
In a surprise move, the leader of the Republicains, Eric Ciotti, announced on Tuesday he would not attend the Saint-Denis meeting because, he said, Macron had failed to show up for the anti-Semitism march on Sunday called by the heads of both houses of parliament.
Not marching showed disunity, he said, which calls into question Macron’s effort to bring together leaders from across the political spectrum.
Macron’s party has depended on Republicain votes to get laws passed since it failed to win an absolute majority in the National Assembly in elections last year, but the Republicains have vowed to vote against the immigration bill unless they get concessions.
Macron will therefore meet Friday with his supporters and only three opposition leaders: Marine Tondelier of the Greens, Fabien Roussel of the Communist Party and Jordan Bardella of the far-right National Rally.
