President Emmanuel Macron has ruled out holding a referendum on France’s mass immigration policies – despite his own Interior Minister publicly calling for such a vote and describing the issue as “central to everything.”
Speaking during an interview with French broadcaster TF1 earlier this week, Macron said that while he intends to hold “several referendums in the coming months” on unresolved political matters, he would not include immigration among them.
“I do not believe that a referendum on migration would fall within the scope of the Constitution,” the President said.
His remarks came after French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, a member of Macron’s government, told Le Journal du Dimanche that he wanted to see immigration put before the French people in a national vote.
“I would raise the immigration issue – because it is central to everything,” Retailleau said. “Our social model is far more generous than that of our European neighbours, and immigration puts continuous pressure on it.”
“No phenomenon in the past fifty years has so profoundly changed our society. None. It is therefore legitimate to ask the French whether they still support this model of immigration – and whether they are prepared to accept the social, cultural, and economic consequences.”
Retailleau, who described himself as a “Gaullist,” said he supports popular referendums to restore sovereignty to the public and proposed constitutional reform to broaden the scope of Article 11.
“I deeply believe in popular sovereignty – and thus in referendums,” he said. “Restoring that sovereignty will require revising the Constitution to broaden the use of Article 11.”
He added that any referendum must deal with “fundamental” issues and not be used as a political gimmick, referencing the 2005 referendum on the EU Constitution which was bypassed through the Lisbon Treaty.
“A referendum must not be a sleight of hand,” he said. “The French wouldn’t accept it. The questions must be fundamental. I’m thinking in particular of immigration and related social issues.”
Retailleau argued that a public vote was needed not only on principle, but due to the current gridlock in the French legislature.
“The referendum offers a bridge between representative and direct democracy,” he said. “In today’s context – with no majority in the National Assembly – representative democracy is weakened.”
“The referendum thus becomes an essential tool: it allows us to resolve major questions, bypassing institutional and judicial deadlocks.”
Despite this, Macron has dismissed the idea of putting the issue to the public, stating that immigration does not clearly fall under Article 11 of the Constitution, which allows referendums on “economic or social policy.”
Legal uncertainty remains over whether the immigration topic qualifies for a referendum. While immigration has implications for both economics and society, the lack of specific mention in the constitutional text has led to conflicting legal interpretations and debate within French discourse.