Policy seen as part of tougher stance by Emmanuel Macron as he prepares to take on Marie Le Pen

France will start setting quotas for migrant workers from next year as Emmanuel Macron toughens his stance on immigration in an apparent attempt to appeal to rightwing voters.

The French labour minister, Muriel Pénicaud, said on Tuesday that France would set quotas for the first time, with the government working with employers to identify industries lacking qualified candidates and where foreigners could fill the gap.

“This is about France hiring based on its needs. It’s a new approach, similar to what is done in Canada or Australia,” Penicaud told BFMTV.

She did not say how many foreign workers would be granted visas, nor if an applicant’s nationality would be taken into account, a proposal floated last month by the prime minister, Édouard Philippe. The quotas were presented as a way to simplify the hiring process for businesses.

Currently, employers have to take part in a complex administrative process and justify why a French citizen cannot be hired for a position they intend to give to a foreign worker needing a visa.

With Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally hoping to make gains in local elections in March and Le Pen still seen as Macron’s main political rival in the run up to 2022 presidential elections, the centrist president has recently begun focusing on immigration and hardening his stance.

The number of foreigners in France is not the main worry of the electorate – who are more concerned about making ends meet and growing fears over the climate crisis – but Le Pen’s anti-immigration party continues to focus on the issue and is seeking to win over voters from the mainstream right.

Macron, who was elected with support from voters on both the right and left, appears to be preparing the ground for a second presidential stand-off with Le Pen, seeking to address rightwing voters who complain there are too many foreigners in France.

Macron has steadily heightened his rhetoric on immigration since September, when he told Europe 1 radio: “France cannot host everyone if it wants to host people well. In order to be able to welcome everyone properly, we should not be too attractive a country.”

The question of setting quotas for economic migrants was an idea of the former rightwing president Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007 but was never put in place. Macron distanced himself from the idea of quotas during the 2017 election campaign andpraised the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, for “saving our collective dignity” by allowing in large numbers of refugees.

However, he recently sparked criticism on the left when he gave an interview focused on immigration and Islam to the conservative weekly magazine Valeurs Actuelles, where his views were considered as appealing to readers on the right and far right. When an outraged voter criticised Macron for doing the interview, he said: “You have to speak to everyone.”

Macron’s national debate on immigration plays into the hands of the French far right | Cole Stangler Read more

The prime minister, will unveil a series of measures on Wednesday after France received a record 122,743 asylum requests last year, up 22% from the year before.

The new measures could include restrictions on migrants bringing over family members or limiting access to health care for asylum seekers while their claims are processed.

France has also called for an overhaul of the EU’s efforts to halt the surge of migrants fleeing conflict and poverty in Asia, the Middle East and Africa since 2015.

The French president wants more EU members to share the burden of taking in migrants allowed to stay, a move opposed by several countries in eastern and central Europe.

But Macron sparked anger from Bulgaria’s government last week after he said he wanted legal migrants from Guinea or Ivory Coast rather than “clandestine networks of Bulgarians and Ukrainians”.