On December 20th 2023, a few hours before the longest night of the year, the National Assembly voted in favour of the Asylum and Migration Act. After a series of legislative twists and turns, mobilisations of organisations in the press with various articles, a motion to reject the bill was passed by the government’s opponents (the first vote to bring together opponents from the left to the far right), and a joint committee using the Senate’s text as a starting point. It was this series of events that attracted more attention than the content of this scurrilous law.
Because that’s what it is : a law enshrining ideas and proposals of the far right. The law enshrines the principle of national preference, which has been in place for several years now (employers already have to justify to the prefecture that they cannot find a European employee before taking on a person whose job qualifies them for a work permit).
The far right is waging a cultural battle, in France, in Europe and around the world. National preference is one of the spearheads of this battle, whether for employees or vegetables (eating French food). Nationalism permeates this thinking. Human rights thinking, which considers that every human being is born and remains equal in rights and dignity, does not even scratch the surface of their profoundly domineering and racist ideology.
We would like to emphasise that the political federalism we promote in this magazine is the heir to the action and thinking of anti-fascist activists. Resistance fighters who made their fight against fascism the basis for building a world of peace, a world in which respect for fundamental rights is one of the cornerstones of the rule of law. Our fight against national-populism covers all these dimensions.
Other papers will surely explain how French hypercentralism led to the adoption of this bill, which was finally drafted by a small consortium of 14 people. The fact that several presidents of Département have indicated that they will continue to allocate personalised autonomy assistance (APA) without applying the law that has been passed, shows how this muddle is politically and technically unworkable for local authorities.
We need to be aware and make people aware that the hypercentralism of our Republic makes us absolutely vulnerable to the rise of hate speeches and rejection of others. Unlike in the United States or Brazil, we have no barriers, no checks and balances to resist the battle - which is not just cultural - that the far right is winning in France, Europe and the rest of the world.
This issue, the last of our fiftieth anniversary year, once again shows us another way to arm ourselves. We repeat here : diversity is wealth. Federalism is what can still guarantee our European and global security.