After several high-profile cases, French MPs have voted to enshrine in law a ban on mayors celebrating marriages between French nationals and individuals facing deportation. The mobilisation of courageous mayors against illegal immigration has therefore finally borne fruit.
A few months ago, Robert Ménard, the conservative mayor of Béziers in southern France, was taken to court for refusing to marry a local woman to an illegal Algerian immigrant subject to an order to leave French territory (OQTF). Refusing to plead guilty, he called for a change in French law, which currently punishes elected officials who refuse to perform marriages in such cases—regardless of the fiancé’s illegal presence on French soil. He faces up to five years in prison, a fine of €75,000, and disqualification from public office.
A few weeks later, another mayor followed suit. Marlène Mourier, mayor of Bourg-lès-Valence, refused to perform a marriage deemed a ‘marriage of convenience’ between a French woman and an illegal Tunisian immigrant. Mourier and Ménard, joined by two other mayors, published an open letter in Le Figaro calling for a review of French law to prevent such situations from recurring and placing local elected officials in an impossible position—namely, giving their public blessing to a situation that is clearly illegal. President Macron himself, in his televised address last month, described the Ménard case as “grotesque” and came out in favour of changing the law.
The process is now underway, as MPs on Monday, June 16th, adopted a bill in committee to ban the celebration of civil marriages when one of the future spouses is an illegal immigrant. The aim, according to MP Eric Michoux, a member of the Union des Droites pour la République (UDR), allied with the Rassemblement National (RN), is to “protect mayors,” who until now have been “unwitting accomplices in a misuse of the law” when they have celebrated such unions.
The bill, which originated in the Senate, was already approved by the upper house a few weeks ago. The law must now be examined by MPs in plenary session at the end of the month. 73% of French people are in favour of this common-sense measure, but the Left has already made its opposition to the bill clear. Socialists and greens denounce “a new drift to the right and the far right,” calling the law “xenophobic and liberticidal.” They believe it is the result of a “normalisation of reactionary discourse, disguised as freedom of conscience or tradition.” In the centre, Macron’s supporters are hiding behind formal arguments to distance themselves from the bill, highlighting its potentially unconstitutional nature, since it would be discriminatory.
