France’s Europe minister said the only plausible way of addressing irregular migration is via the EU.
BRUSSELS ― The French government and its far-right rivals are trading blows over tougher migration policies ― 10 months out from the country’s most significant presidential election in modern times.
The country’s Europe minister, a loyalist of centrist President Emmanuel Macron, told POLITICO that Jordan Bardella’s National Rally had a position on migration that was “a big fraud.” The far-right party, which says it did everything it could to support the reduction of irregular migration and increase deportation numbers, is topping opinion polls.
In a sign that the election campaign could become increasingly focused on the topic, Benjamin Haddad said the National Rally has opposed EU efforts to control migration at every turn — except when it became politically profitable.
“There is a big fraud being carried out,” said Haddad, who pushed to toughen the EU’s Migration and Asylum Pact as well as the Returns Regulation, which deals with migrant deportations.
Haddad’s remarks amount to a political attack against the National Rally on its core position — clamping down on migration. In his wide-ranging interview with POLITICO published Monday, Bardella blasted the EU as being responsible for “uncontrolled immigration” into the 27-member bloc while saying he agrees with JD Vance’s view that France was being “submerged by massive migration.”
Haddad spoke to POLITICO before the interview with Bardella was published.
For Haddad, who said he plans to run for election without specifying in what capacity, the Bardella position smacks of hypocrisy. The minister said Marine Le Pen, the former National Rally leader, was “virulently opposed” to the Returns Regulation before voting in favor of it in the European Parliament.
‘Above and beyond’
The Migration and Asylum Pact governs how migrants are distributed among EU countries after people enter the bloc. Bardella’s party was also critical of the Returns Regulation, which gives countries more latitude to deport migrants whose asylum requests have been denied, but ultimately backed it in the European Parliament.
Haddad said that he had worked with French conservative lawmaker François-Xavier Bellamy on the Returns Regulation — and said he was pushing “above and beyond the returns regulation for us [EU] to harden instruments such as visas, conditionality for development aid.”
A controversial aspect of the regulation has to do with so-called “return hubs” or deportation centers — facilities outside the EU where migrants whose asylum requests are denied can be sent when their home countries refuse to take them back. France is not part of a core group of countries seeking to set up such hubs, but Haddad this was not a “political, ideological or moral subject” for Macron’s government but rather about “efficiency.”
“We remain a bit skeptical,” he said, adding that France was in favor of “selecting asylum seekers at the external borders of the European Union.”
‘Absolutely necessary’
As for the EU striking deals with third countries, such as major agreements with Egypt and Tunisia overseen by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Paris was in favor. “Of course we also need to have a structured dialogue that uses economic instruments with countries in the European neighborhood — so I think (such deals) are absolutely necessary.”
With Bardella saying he wouldn’t join the bloc’s mainstream in the footsteps of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Haddad said France was “getting results today thanks to European cooperation.”
He said: “Mrs Meloni is getting results thanks to European cooperation. There is no nationalist solution to a problem that is this complex, that requires shared instruments, that requires cooperation … So we can see that their position from the beginning is incomprehensible.”