Barnier speaks harshly on immigration in search of center-right presidential ticket from France

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By Élisabeth Pineau

PARIS, October 20 (Reuters) – Former Europe’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, seeking the center-right ticket to France’s 2022 elections, said the country was deeply divided and accused President Emmanuel Macron of being oblivious to the daily worries of citizens.

Barnier said what he called runaway immigration weakened France’s sense of identity – an argument for voters in conservative right-wing political circles as he seeks to counter the far right.

“When the foundation is fragile, when it moves, you can’t build on it,” Barnier told reporters. “The basis of our country is weak: our unity is fragile, our unity is called into question.”

Barnier is locked in a divisive race for the nomination of the Republicans (LR) party which has brought to the surface deep divisions within the party and diverted attention from an election race that is preparing for six months of the vote.

Barnier’s bid for the presidential nomination has been widely dismissed as hopeless in newspaper columns, with the 70-year-old seen by many as a drab, old-fashioned Europhile.

However, his promise of a French moratorium of three to five years for immigrants outside the European Union and a call to France to recover the legal sovereignty of the courts of the European Union, challenged voters concerned by questions of identity. and national security, delivering a blow in the arm to its offer.

During the moratorium on immigration, he said, “we will take steps to review any procedures that do not work to make them more rigorous and fairer.”

However, it is not known how France, a member of the European Union’s Schengen free movement area, could implement such a moratorium without violating EU law, according to Eurointelligence analysts.

Polls show Macron leading in the first round of the presidential election, defeating two far-right candidates, National Rally leader Marine Le Pen and maverick television commentator Eric Zemmour, whose rise in popularity changed the dynamics of the election.

In the race for the LR ticket, polls show that Barnier is following Xavier Bertrand, a former center-right minister, and by a narrower margin Valérie Pecresse, president of the Paris region, who both left LR after the victory of Macron in 2017.

However, Barnier’s popularity is growing among base LR members who will vote for their party’s candidate, and see him – also a former government minister – as a former loyalist because he has never left the party. (Report by Elizabeth Pineau, edited by Richard Lough)

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