French Prime Minister François Bayrou is facing a crisis after acknowledging on television that the French felt overwhelmed by immigration. These remarks could cost him the fragile agreement reached on the next budget. The Socialists said they were outraged by the words used by the PM, accusing him of adopting the rhetoric of the “far-right.” They threatened to return to their initial position of obstruction, alongside the hard Left.
The controversy arose on Monday, January 27th during a televised interview with the prime minister on the LCI channel, in which he commented on the remarks of his minister for the economy, who the previous day had declared himself in favour of ever more immigration. Bayrou said he acknowledged the existence of “a feeling of migratory submersion” among many French people, triggering outrage from the Left and centre. The following day, he refused to apologise in front of the MPs at the National Assembly and pointed to the dangerous case of Mayotte.
In protest, the Socialists announced that they were suspending discussions on the budget, and that they were again reserving the right to vote on the next motion of no-confidence against Bayrou proposed by the far-left, jeopardising the long negotiations under way since the start of the year to secure a majority for the new 2025 budget.
On Wednesday 29th, the government question time in the Senate could have provided a new opportunity for clarification. But it was not to the liking of the Left. Once more, Bayrou made no attempt to deny his own statements or apologise, leaving it to the minister for relations with Parliament to manage the controversy. “Words are traps. Is there a feeling of submersion? In opinion polls, two thirds of the French people express this feeling, but the only word you’re focusing on in this expression is ‘submersion’, not ‘feeling’. We can’t ignore what our fellow citizens are feeling and expressing,” the minister said, reading out a note prepared by Bayrou—obviously aware of the state of French opinion on this explosive issue.
The socialists felt that this lip service was not enough. “I cannot accept that a prime minister who owes everything to the [left-wing] Republican Front should allow himself to be contaminated by the vocabulary of the extreme right. No, France is not overwhelmed by immigration,” thundered Patrick Kanner, chairman of the Socialist group in the upper house.
On behalf of the Socialists, Kanner made two demands to the PM: that he reconsider the term ‘migratory submersion’ and that he guarantee that he would not touch State Medical Aid. He received no clear answer to either of these questions.
Saying he was “disappointed,” Kanner explained to the press that the socialists had no intention of resuming discussions with the government on the budget, at a time when deadlines are accelerating. On Thursday 30th, the draft budget is due to be examined in a select committee by representatives of both chambers, before being put to the vote in plenary next week.
However, the representatives of the Socialist Party (PS) remain divided on the attitude to adopt. For some, Bayrou’s position on immigration fully justifies censure. For others, the priority must remain the adoption of a budget as soon as possible, and it is therefore a question of tactically dissociating the two subjects. The government, anxious to reach an agreement on the budget, is criticising a posture of “one-upmanship” that would be “overplayed.”
The PS could be moving towards no immediate censure in order to obtain a budget, however imperfect, and reserve the right to censure at a later date. The Bayrou government is therefore more than ever on borrowed time, and the French may legitimately have the ‘feeling’ that their representatives are not listening to their concerns.
On the Public Sénat website, the official media outlet of the upper house, an online survey on the morning of January 30th showed that 75% of those questioned thought that Bayrou was right to talk about ‘migratory submersion.’
