On the eve of the National Assembly's consideration of the immigration bill, the head of state said on Sunday that it would be “a mistake” to “think of solving our current problems by forgetting these rights.”
This is a warning given in a speech marking the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. While a heated debate loomed in the National Assembly on Monday over Gérald Darmanin's immigration law, Emmanuel Macron praised the right to asylum on Sunday, justifying it with the support of “all those who fight for human rights every day”.
“France maintains its long tradition of asylum for all whose rights are threatened in their country, and we will continue to defend this right to asylum.” “It is the one that protects freedom fighters, designed at the end of the Second World War, when so many stateless people were streaming through Europe,” Emmanuel Macron launched with the illuminated Eiffel Tower behind him as he spoke at the Palais de Chaillot, where the 1948 Declaration was drawn up.
“Political” and “moral” guilt
“To think that we can solve our current problems by forgetting these rights, which for France form the basis of our republic but which are part of the identity of our Europe, would be not only a political but also a moral mistake,” the boss added added by the state. He stressed that after the return of the Taliban in 2021, France stands “particularly at the side of Afghan women, whose most basic rights are being so seriously violated today.”
More broadly, Emmanuel Macron defended the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which he sees as “an intangible value”. “These principles are not cultural, they are not Western, they are not outdated or geographically limited,” he stressed, denouncing “this kind of contemporary revisionism that we are seeing reemerging everywhere.”