"What don't you like about this bill?" On Tuesday, December 19, an irritated French president questioned the leaders of the majority he had gathered at the Elysée. Emmanuel Macron's allies were deeply disconcerted by the negotiations taking place with leaders of the Les Républicains (LR, right) party to pass the immigration bill. Countless concessions were made to the right to ensure that the bill would be backed by the Assemblée Nationale and the Sénat, including measures allowing to strip dual-national convicts of their French nationality.

The concept of national preference, which the Rassemblement National (RN, far-right) has always defended, has crept into the bill's text. Legal foreigners who do not work will have to prove that they have been resident in France for five years – unless they can prove at least 30 months of professional activity – before they can benefit from family and housing benefits. The abolition of State Medical Aid (AME) ended up being deleted from the bill, but the government has pledged to reform it as early as 2024.

The text has become so right-wing that even the far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who said she would vote for it, has proclaimed it an"ideological victory" for her party. "We can't be the puppets of the LR and the RN," said Stéphane Séjourné, head of Macron's Renaissance party, aware that some MPs are already betting on the end of "Macronism."

The former president of the Assemblée Nationale, Richard Ferrand, confessed to being "uncomfortable." Some, like Yaël Braun-Pivet, the current head of the Assemblée, and Sacha Houlié, the president of the Law Commission, think the bill should be withdrawn altogether. Macron has refused this idea: Le Pen, he thinks, would revel in its withdrawal.

Macron is well aware that the failure of this bill, when the French mostly support it, would accentuate the feeling of a five-year stalemate. There is no reason, he believes, to go so far in surrendering. Macron insists that the regularization of undocumented workers was maintained, that he has "not given in on housing benefits [which is now in the final bill], nor on state medical aid," rebuking Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne for her poor "analysis of the situation." "We need to move from the emotional to the factual," said government spokesperson Olivier Véran. But how?

Macron's close ally François Bayrou, currently awaiting judgment in his embezzlement trial on February 5, gave his "friend" the key he believed could provide a way out of the crisis fracturing his party: He has proposed that the RN votes be disregarded. If, at the end of the vote, the compromise hammered out in the Joint Parliamentary Committee is adopted thanks to the votes of the far-right, the bill would not be passed and the president "may refer the matter to the Assemblée Nationale for a second deliberation, based on Article 10 of the Constitution."

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