Gérard Collomb comes out of the woods. Retired from public life since battling stomach cancer, the former interior minister spoke twice this weekend to criticize the reception of the Ocean Viking, a ship carrying 230 migrants, in Toulon on Friday.
On the same day, Gérard Collomb, noted on his Twitter account a “turning point in immigration policy in France”. “By now welcoming the Ocean Viking, we are opening a new gap, creating a precedent,” he insists in an interview for the weekly Point posted on sunday.
“For me, this can only encourage the networks of traffickers for whom immigrants are a source of considerable profit: the figures vary from 7 to 30 billion euros worldwide”, continues Gérard Collomb.
According to him, if “we can move through all these cases individually”, to “stick only to a sensitivity reaction, we reinforce the problem more than we solve it, creating an air call”.
An exit linked to disagreements with Emmanuel Macron on immigration?
The former socialist, who later became one of the main supporters of Emmanuel Macron in the face of the 2017 presidential elections, urges the President of the Republic not to “close himself in[r] in this new ship acceptance policy”.
He issued a warning: “If it continues, next time it will no longer be moderate politicians who will have to handle immigration issues. Look at what happened in Sweden.” A reference to the victory in the country, during the legislative elections last September, of a block that brought together the right and the extreme right.
In his interview, Gérard Collomb also indicates that his differences of opinion with the government on migration policy are the reason for his surprise resignation, which occurred in October 2018. At the time, he officially explained it because of his desire to running again for mayor of Lyon, after having been a councilor for the Gaul capital from 2001 to 2017, then between 2018 and 2020.
In his interview in Spottells another story. His departure is said to stem from a disagreement with Emmanuel Macron over the creation of “controlled centers” to house migrants, an initiative of the European Commission.
Gérard Collomb details: “The original idea is to create these centers outside the European Union, in Tunisia, Morocco and Albania. These three countries refuse, saying, in essence, that they are not there to solve our problems.” Emmanuel Macron then proposed opening such a center in Toulon or Marseille, and asked the prefect of the time, Pierre Dartout, to work there. I was Minister of the Interior at the time, and I am totally against this project.”
“Macron’s immigration vision is confirmed”
For him, if “we opened all these control centers, all the migrants would stay on our soil.” The former tenant of Place Beauvau evokes his emotion when he went to Marseille on October 1, 2018 to commemorate the death of two girls, killed by “an irregular Tunisian”, who “should be placed […] in an administrative detention center in Lyon to be expelled”.
“I thought alors: ‘Je ne veux plus que cela se reproduise’ And if the installation of the control center is carried out, I will later feel responsible for the acts that lead to the death of people”, explained-t -The.
These comments have given food for thought to the right and far-right, who are critical of Ocean Viking’s reception. For Marine Le Pen, “this testimony […] confirms the immigrationist vision that, in fact, Emmanuel Macron has never stopped having”.
According to Jordán Bardella, now president of the National Association (RN), these “confessions […] they confirm that our leaders are aware of the dangers of migratory submersion (terrorism, insecurity, loss of identity), but they deliberately choose to persecute it”. As for Éric Ciotti, the deputy Les Républicains (LR) called on the president to “s ‘explain’ about what he interprets as a ‘complacency with irregular immigration’.
For his part, Gérard Collomb defended himself in Point promote the training of Marine Le Pen through his words. “It is by not making a decision on immigration that we play the game of the extreme right”, she judges, before insisting: “The Swedish Social Democrats were slow to take this problem into account, look at the result! “.
A “slightly confusing” argument
If the presidential camp has not yet reacted, Mathieu Croissandeau, editorial writer for BFMTV, underlines several elements of an “argument that is sometimes a bit confusing” about Gérard Collomb.
First of all, “he explains that he had been reassured by Emmanuel Macron’s firmness with the Aquarius”, a ship carrying immigrants that France refused to accept in 2018. “That was still before his resignation,” Mathieu Croissandeau stresses.
Then he adds that it is “curious to resign for something that has not been done”, in this case the “controlled centers”. Finally, our columnist believes that “it always leaves a funny impression to hear a politician say ‘we should, we shouldn’t, we should'” while the latter was in charge. “September 2018 is the date of promulgation of [la] asylum and immigration law” by Gérard Collomb, he recalls.
Source: BFM TV
