Macron, hard-line interior minister agree to disagree on immigration crackdown after first meeting

PARIS — When Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau headed over to the Elysée palace to meet President Emmanuel Macron on Monday, he wasn’t looking for commonality.

He went to stand his ground.

Macron and Retailleau spoke face to face for the first since the interior minister’s appointment and against the backdrop of mounting tensions in both France and Europe over immigration. The two spoke for an hour and a half, a Retailleau adviser said, during which the interior minister “outlined his positions, and the president gave his opinion.”

“There weren’t so many disagreements, but we didn’t come with the purpose of seeking agreements. The meeting was not intended to be conclusive,” the aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in line with French professional norms, added.

Retailleau, a hard-line figure in the conservative Les Républicains party, has faced criticism from Macron and his centrist allies over his tough stance on immigration, a top issue for the interior minister.

After losing control of the lower house in this summer’s snap election, Macron struck a deal with Les Républicains to form a fragile minority government. This alliance allowed Macron to maintain a grip on power but has forced him to share it — both with conservative Prime Minister Michel Barnier and Cabinet members who, at times, lean further to the right than the president is comfortable with.

Retailleau and Barnier are pushing for a crackdown on both legal and illegal immigration while Macron attempts to hold a more moderate line in the context of a rightward shift on migration across the European Union.

The Barnier government has pledged to increase the enforcement rate of deportation orders, which is currently extremely low, partly due to geopolitical tensions with the countries of origin of many immigrants living in France without legal permission.

Retailleau has faced criticism after recently saying that immigration was “not beneficial” to France and that the État de droit, a French concept akin to the rule of law, was neither “intangible nor sacred.”

When asked earlier this month about Retailleau’s comments and whether immigration was “bad,” the French president said: “The answer is no. It depends.”

The president also reportedly told people close to him that he felt “ashamed” by some of the new right-wing government’s most hard-line members, Agence France-Presse reported.

In terms of policy, both Barnier and Retailleau have ruled out enacting something similar to Italy’s transferring of asylum-seekers to detention centers in Albania, calling it unconstitutional. The French premier and his interior minister visited the French-Italian border on Friday, accompanied by two ministers from Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government.

Still, Retailleau has stated that he would look into establishing transit centers in third-party countries where undocumented individuals who cannot be deported to their home countries would be sent.

According to an Elysée adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, the French presidency is unconvinced by the prospect of setting up return hubs, calling instead for an “orderly discussion [on migration] that respects international and European law.”

Clea Caulcutt contributed to this report.