Mr. Retailleau, aren't you French by "chance"?

The French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau stated in an interview on LCI that "birthright citizenship [should no longer be] automatic in the mainland […]." Should we therefore choose our birthplace?

Mr. Minister, in response to Darius Rochebin on the news channel LCI on 13 April, when you said "one should not be French by the chance of birth," explain to us how your own nationality is not the product of chance? Because, listening to you, one would assume that your birth on French soil was the result of thorough reflection and concrete prenatal actions on your part. So that your first cry was not due to a series of coincidences over time and encounters. In your eyes, to be born in Cholet, therefore, has nothing to do with good fortune. Hence, we might consider that you opted, even before your birth, perhaps even before your conception, for a pure French sperm and ovum, from a true Vendée lineage. What an embryonic superpower!

Question of Ancestors

And if one of your parents were Alsatian, should they have chosen straightaway to become Vendéen to leave nothing to chance? Goodness, a German ancestor, that could have caused a scandal! But at least he would have had the privilege of the motivation to plant his flag. On closer inspection, who among your compatriots have the most merit in being proud to be French? Aren't they those who could truly choose, sometimes after many administrative challenges? Unlike you, born French to French parents, purely by chance! Because yes, you had good parents born in the right places, with little travel inclination, so that you could be born on the right soil. Vive la France!

(MH with Olivier Duquesne – Source: LCI – Picture: © picture alliance/dpa/MAXPPP | Alexandre Marchi)