By Tassilo Hummel
PARIS (Reuters) -Parts of a contested new French immigration law go against the constitution and must be scrapped, France’s Constitutional Council said on Thursday.
The court, a body that validates the constitutionality of laws, struck down nearly three dozen measures contained in the bill, including the lion’s share of clauses introduced by opposition rightwing lawmakers during a turbulent parliamentary process.
Measures including toughening conditions for the family reunification of migrants, birthright citizenship and access to state welfare, were scrapped, mostly for procedural reasons.
The ruling will offer some relief to President Emmanuel Macron, who had made the bill a key plank of his second term. While he had defended its passage through parliament, Macron, who lacks a working majority in parliament, was embarrassed by the support it drew from Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party as conservative lawmakers hardened its content.
Macron had referred the legislation to the Council, along with three other groups.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin welcomed the ruling, saying it had validated the government’s initial proposals.
“Never has a bill included more measures to expel delinquents or introduced stricter requirements for the integration of foreigners,” Darmanin added.
Far-right opposition leader Jordan Bardella slammed the court’s annullment of several of the bill’s toughest anti-immigration measures.
“The Constitutional Council has censured those measures that were most approved by the French people. The immigration law is dead in the water. The only solution is a referendum on immigration,” Bardella wrote on X.
(Reporting by Tassilo Hummel;Editing by Alison Williams and Richard Lough)
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