Defender of Rights Claire Hédon, in charge of defending French citizens' rights, wrote this op-ed before Emmanuel Macron's bill was rejected by the Assemblée Nationale on Monday, December 11, in a surprise blow to his government. The French president however decided to maintain its bid to pass the bill and sent the legislation back to a Joint Parliamentary Committee, in which the right has the majority, to reach a compromise on a new version of the text.

As soon as it was presented by the government, I warned of the numerous infringements of rights and freedoms included in the bill "to control immigration and improve integration." Demagogic one-upmanship during parliamentary debates – particularly in the Sénat – has exacerbated these violations, in defiance of the French state's constitutional and international obligations.

Firstly, in the name of the legitimate objective of safeguarding public order and combating illegal immigration, the bill abolishes a number of guarantees currently in place to protect the fundamental rights of foreign nationals. It also increases the scope for refusing or withdrawing the right to stay, even for people who have not been convicted of any criminal offense. As a result, the expulsion of foreign nationals would be largely left to the discretion of the administration, with the risk of increasing the number of arbitrary decisions. The resultant serious weakening of residence rights would be all the more worrying in that the right to a judge has been reduced. In particular, the reform of litigation envisaged by the draft includes extremely short appeal deadlines in many cases, complicating access to the courts.

Secondly, the bill lends credence to the idea – contradicted by numerous studies – that "overly favorable" reception conditions encourage illegal immigration or the long-term settlement of foreigners in France. This argument has been omnipresent in parliamentary debates and has prompted legislators to envisage restrictions on numerous rights, especially for particularly vulnerable people.

I'm thinking initially of the right of asylum, with the proliferation of possibilities for rejecting applications without examination of merits, coupled with an extension of the single-judge procedure before the National Court of Asylum. I am also thinking of the right of residence for foreign nationals who are ill – something reserved for cases where the required treatment does not exist at all in the country of origin – without verification of the possibilities of effective access to treatment. This provision would lead to a sharp drop in the number of people admitted for treatment, to the detriment of the health of those concerned, even though this reason for admission represents a tiny proportion of residence permits issued (around 1.5%).

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