THE UN’s special rapporteur on racism has criticised President Emmanuel Macron’s fiercely opposed immigration Bill as violating France’s constitutional commitment to equality and liberty.

Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance Ashwini KP warned today that the Bill, which includes obstacles to family reunification and to migrants’ access to benefits, contradicted the French constitution.

The comments come amid a wave of mass protests across France at the weekend calling on President Macron not to sign the legislation into law.

According to the Interior Ministry, 75,000 people took part across the country, with 16,000 protesters turning out in Paris. But the left-wing CGT union federation put the number of protesters nationwide at around 150,000. 

CGT national secretary Sophie Binet said: “Our objective is to denounce a law that is not the France of solidarity, freedom, equality and fraternity, that of living together in everyday life.”

The timing of the protests came just before the Constitutional Council decides on Thursday whether all articles in the law, passed by parliament in December, conforms with the French constitution.

The law “was written under the dictate of the merchants of hate who dream of imposing on France their project of ‘national preference’,” wrote signatories of the call to march. 

The call added: “National preference, under which the French, not foreigners, should profit from the riches of the land, has long been the rallying cry of the far-right National Rally party.”

National Rally, under the leadership of Marine Le Pen, have welcomed the proposed new law.

Speaking from the protest in Paris, French Communist Party national secretary Fabien Roussel said the march aimed to “cancel this inhumane law.”

Ian Brossat, the party’s Paris senator, said that if finally agreed “100,000 people will be deprived of social assistance.

“Among them, 30,000 children, some French with foreign parents. This law shames France.”