That Nicolas Sarkozy was focusing a large part of his electoral campaign on the issue of immigration was no mystery. But Sunday, in that day Villepinte, a town of 40 inhabitants in the northern banlieue of Paris, the outgoing President of the Republic brought out the heavy artillery.
In front of one crowd of 60 thousand supporters galvanized as never before, the candidate for re-election did not hesitate to evoke the hypothesis of France leaving the Schengen agreements, which govern precisely the management of migratory flows from outside to Europe, often entrusted to border countries including Italy.
They weren't missing last year already the controversy over the Lampedusa case, when over 25 illegal immigrants landed on the Italian coast and many of them tried to reach French territory, promptly stopped in Ventimiglia by an impressive contingent of security forces wanted by Sarko to stop the "invasion".
But in Villepinte the consort of Carla Bruni went further: he called for a revision of the treaties, even threatening to suspend France's participation if this did not happen within a year. A real ultimatum: “The Schengen agreements are no longer able to respond to the seriousness of the situation. They must be reviewed, exactly as we have done recently by reviewing the fiscal and financial rules”. "We must not - Sarko also said - leave the management of migratory flows to the technocrats and the courts".
