Sawt Falasteen - Immigration row piles pressure on French PM after 'flooding' remark

Bayrou sparked an angry outcry from the leftist opposition, as well as rebukes from centrist allies, when he said Monday that immigration was "a positive" so long as it remained "proportionate" to the size of the population.

"As soon as you get the feeling of flooding, of no longer recognising your own country, its lifestyle and its culture, rejection appears," he said.

While Bayrou won applause from immigration hardliners in the government, including Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau and Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin, as well as the far right, the comments were widely condemned by the opposition on the left.

Crucially, this includes the Socialists with whom Bayrou has been maneuvring carefully to build bridges in the hope that they will not join efforts to bring his minority government down in any coming no-confidence vote in parliament.

The strategy of prising the centre-left Socialist lawmakers away from their alliance with the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party bore fruit earlier this month, when they declined to back an LFI-sponsored no-confidence motion against the prime minister.

Bayrou has been hoping that they will save him again when he presents his government's long-overdue budget plan, a milestone for his government after parliament sacked the previous cabinet under prime minister Michel Barnier over its austerity budget.

- 'Needlessly caused hurt' -

But angered by Bayrou's "flooding" remarks, which he repeated in parliament on Tuesday, some Socialists have demanded that he take them back or else face losing their support.

"It is in the interest of the country that he take back these words that have needlessly caused hurt," said Socialist deputy Philippe Brun, saying the prime minister's statement had been "out of line".

To back up their threat, the Socialists abruptly cancelled a scheduled meeting with the government about the budget as part of preparations towards a final draft.

Government spokeswoman Sophie Primas urged against "any kind of hostage-taking over the budget", saying the French had "no interest in this battle of words".

But Johanna Rolland, a prominent Socialist and mayor of the western city of Nantes, called on her party colleagues to "firmly consider" voting against Bayrou in a likely no-confidence vote following his budget plan.

While the leftist opposition demanded that Bayrou walk back his remarks, the far-right National Rally (RN) -- the biggest single party in parliament -- said he needed to take action to back up his statements.

"The RN cannot be bought with words," party vice president Sebastien Chenu said, calling on Bayrou to "tackle the cost of immigration" by reducing a public aid programme for immigrants.

- 'Semantic quarrel' -

Some of Bayrou's backers pleaded with the Socialists to cut him some slack for the good of the country.

"People have had enough of this chaos," said one leading member of the Bayrou-founded centrist MoDem party, in reference to recent political instability in France that has seen four different prime ministers in only 12 months.

"We are gambling away the institutional future of this country over a semantic quarrel," added public sector minister Laurent Marcangeli.

According to France's national statistics agency INSEE, there were around 5.6 million foreigners living in France in 2023, representing 8.2 percent of the overall population, against 6.5 percent in 1975.

P.AbuBaker--SF-PST