President Macron’s government has been told it faces an electoral insurrection over its failure to control French borders, amid widespread criticism of its immigration policies.
The warning came from Bruno Retailleau the leader of the opposition centre-right Republicans party in the Senate, the upper house, who said Macron’s hesitations over immigration risked putting populists in power.
Retailleau’s words had particular resonance because Macron is likely to need Republicans’ support to win parliamentary approval for a key immigration bill that has gone before cabinet. Macron lost his outright majority in the National Assembly, the equivalent to the House of Commons, in parliamentary elections last year.
The legislation came after the publication of figures indicating that France had received 156,043 asylum claims last year, a 28.6 per
