France Considers Tightening Citizenship Requirements Amid Immigration Debate

"What does it give as a right? What does it impose as a duty? What advantages does it bring? And how does it commit you to being a member of a national community? What do we believe in when we are French?", asked François Bayrou, during an interview on RMC on Friday. The French Prime Minister recently mentioned a "feeling of migratory submersion", sparking a lively controversy, recalls Le Monde. "We can enter into a debate, we have to think about how [it] is organized", but "we are not going to push everything back" to the next presidential election, he insisted.

Gérard Darmanin, Minister of Justice, declared on Thursday after the vote in the National Assembly of a law aimed at restricting the right of soil in Mayotte, that "the public debate [should] open on the right of soil in our country", and that this question should be the subject of a constitutional revision by referendum or be raised during the next presidential election. His colleague in charge of National Education, Elisabeth Borne, believes for her part that a constitutional reform is not necessary to regulate access to the right of soil. "I am not in favor of it," she said on Friday on RTL.

The former Prime Minister will add: "I am pleased that Bruno Retailleau [the Minister of the Interior] is tackling the dismantling of smuggling networks. And we have lots of provisions, including decrees that remain to be taken on the "immigration" law that had been adopted at the end of 2023". During a visit on Friday to Lognes, in Seine-et-Marne, Retailleau in turn specified that being French implies "respecting the way of life" and "the republican principles" of France. "Access to naturalization, it’s the Civil Code" which, in its article 21 in particular, "talks about assimilation", recalled the Minister of the Interior.

And to continue: "We can see that there are administrative conditions to be respected, but [...] this means that you have to assimilate values" such as freedom, equality between men and women, fraternity, "a republican notion that goes beyond beliefs, skin color, social conditions". Belkhir Belhaddad, a deputy associated with Ensemble pour la République, "totally opposed" to this law aimed at restricting the right of soil in Mayotte, announced on Friday his intention to leave the presidential parliamentary group, denouncing a common will with the Rassemblement national (RN) to "introduce a dose of national preference in access to certain social benefits".