Macron focuses on immigration with debate in French parliament

French lawmakers were due to discuss immigration policy on Monday in what President Emmanuel Macron has promised will be an annual debate.

The centrist president announced the move in April as part of his response to protests by the Yellow Vests movement, drawing criticism from the left which argued that the issue was not a major concern of the protesters.

Prime Minister Edouard Philippe is due to set out the government’s position in the National Assembly, followed by speakers from the government and opposition parties, but no vote is due to take place.

The issue has been controversial within Macron’s own centrist La Republique en Marche (The Republic on the Move, LREM) party, with several lawmakers uneasy at what they see as a hardening of Macron’s position since the presidential election of 2017.

A 2018 law extending migrant detention saw one of the first rebellions in the president’s parliamentary bloc, even if only nine LREM deputies out of more than 300 voted against the provision.

Immigration is one of the favourite topics of far-right leader Marine Le Pen, whom Macron beat in the 2017 election and whose National Rally he depicts as the main rival to his centrist bloc.

Macron told Europe1 radio last month that he wanted a “calm” debate on the issue, saying that French and European migration policy was currently “both ineffective and inhumane.”

“I think that it would be a mistake to say that the question of migration is a taboo or that we can’t talk about it except when there is a crisis,” he told Europe1 radio. (dpa/NAN)