France’s Macron faces cracks in his government over the migration law. As a result of concerns over the new law, which led to the resignation of the health minister, French President Emmanuel Macron encountered divisions within his ruling coalition on Wednesday.

The measure serves as an example of the rightward political shift occurring throughout much of Europe as governments attempt to stifle the growth of the far-right by tightening immigration laws.

The new law, approved late on Tuesday as a compromise between the conservatives and the centrist president’s party, also demonstrated Macron’s challenges in leading without a legislative majority, which he could not secure last year.

To reduce the number of entering migrants, several European countries have also chosen to implement stricter immigration laws. On Wednesday, the European Union agreed to amend its laws about immigration and asylum.

Following the fall of the previous administration over immigration, Geert Wilders, a far-right candidate, emerged victorious in last month’s elections in the Netherlands. Regarding refugee policy, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain is dealing with severe splits among his party.

Aurelien Rousseau, the French Health Minister, resigned in protest over the immigration measure.

“I cannot justify this text,” the ex-Communist Rousseau stated to the daily Le Monde.

To gain the support of right-wing politicians for the bill’s approval, harsher regulations were imposed, such as migration quotas, making it more difficult for immigrants’ children to become French citizens and delaying migrants’ access to social benefits.

The measure softens proposals to relax restrictions on residence permits for workers in labor-deprived areas while making it more straightforward to deport illegal immigrants.

Several of Macron’s more left-leaning MPs expressed discomfort with those criteria, and in a vote on Tuesday, dozens of them either abstained or opposed it.

In the evening, Macron was scheduled to defend the immigration bill in a TV interview. Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne dismissed rumors of a breakdown in Macron’s entourage earlier in the day.

“We’ve done our job; we wanted a text with useful measures that our citizens were calling for,” she stated before adding, “Now let’s move on.”

“SHATTERED”

However, French legislator Jean-Charles Larsonneur said on France Bleu radio that he was quitting Macron’s alliance’s centrist Horizons party because the bill went against “republican values.”

“I think the majority is unfortunately shattered,” he stated.

Even Yaël Braun-Pivet, the president of the lower house of parliament, who supported the law, expressed her “great distress” about many of its provisions, specifically the one that would postpone migrant families’ access to social benefits, to BFM TV.

The dissidents inside Macron’s party have the potential to erode his authority in parliament and make his remaining five-year term more difficult.

Rousseau skipped a weekly cabinet meeting, but all the other left-wing ministers were there, suggesting that the government’s internal uprising had been subdued.

Adopting the law might also help Marine Le Pen, whose far-right party has hailed the revised bill as “a great ideological victory,” just six months before the European Parliament elections, in which immigration will play a significant role.

Left-wing MPs felt the revised immigration measure violated commitments made to thwart right-wing ideas, and Macron went on to win his two presidential mandates in 2017 and 2022 due to people uniting behind him to prevent Le Pen from winning.

Macron will request that the Constitutional Council examine the passed legislation, said French government spokesperson Olivier Veran. This makes it possible for the council to declare some of the more stringent policies unlawful and to overturn them.

He emphasized that the approved measure resulted from a compromise due to a lack of parliamentary majority. “There are things in this law that we don’t like, but they are not shameful,” he remarked. Foreigners were still welcome in France, he said.

According to the statistics office, INSEE, the percentage of immigrants making up France’s population has been gradually rising.

Immigrants, or those born outside of France but now residing there, made up 5% of the population in 1946, 7.4% in 1975, 8.5% in 2010, and slightly more than 10%, or 2.5 million, in 2022. Roughly one-third have learned French.