Reuters
Paris


France’s former president Nicolas Sarkozy yesterday asked members of his opposition party to vote for proposals to reduce immigrants’ access to welfare payments and citizenship.
Sarkozy, tipped to run for president in 2017, said the French welfare system made the country too attractive to asylum-seekers and that automatic access to free healthcare and housing aid should be scrapped.
War refugees should be welcomed but only temporarily, the head of Les Republicains party said. He repeated calls for the suspension of Europe’s Schengen rules on free circulation of people inside the European Union.
Sarkozy is trying to craft a clear alternative to the more open-armed response of Socialist President Francois Hollande. At the same time, he wants to prevent far-right leader Marine Le Pen cashing in on immigration fears at his expense.
British Prime Minister David Cameron wants to restrict welfare for immigrants from within the EU. The EU’s top court ruled late last year, before the current influx of migrants, that Germany could deny benefits to economic immigrants.
Sarkozy said France and Europe should distinguish between war refugees and longer-term political refugees, with acceptance of the former granted on a temporary basis.
He warned the scale of the exodus from Syria could help Islamist radicals consolidate their hold on a country emptied of its citizens.
“The goal is not to have 25mn Syrians settle in Europe and leave a void behind them filled by Daesh (Islamic State),” Sarkozy said.
“The situation is far more grave than people imagine,” he added, addressing his party before a debate on migration in France’s lower house of parliament.
He called on members to vote by tomorrow on proposals that would become the party line.
Sarkozy warned that France risked “implosion” if inward flows of migrants rose. The Schengen pact, which removed internal border controls across much of the EU, should be suspended pending a renegotiation, he said.
Speaking during the debate, Prime Minister Manuel Valls hit back saying there was no substance behind Sarkozy’s “slogans”.
He said France, which has proposed to accept 30,000 migrants over two years as part of an EU-wide plan to take in 160,000, had already temporarily restored some border controls.  “We will not hesitate to do it again as the Schengen rules enable us to,” he said.
An Elabe poll published yesterday for BFM TV showed 80% of French people wanted to restore border control.