The contingency measures are understood to circumvent any EU failures to achieve a negotiated withdrawal and to ensure continued trade between Britain and France immediately post Brexit.
Other measures will cover transport, finance, and citizens’ rights – both French people living in the UK and British citizens living in France.
Officially the so-called Brexit bill will enable the French government to use executive orders to prepare for the United Kingdom’s no-deal withdrawal from the European Union and smooth out potential kinks, senators said.
It will help France deal with “all possible scenarios,” they added.
The possibility of a failure of the negotiations between the UK and the EU, or of one of the two parties failing to ratify, cannot be ruled out, senators continued, stressing that the UK would become what EU treaties define as a “third state”.
France’s European Affairs Minister Nathalie Loiseau told the Senate: “The hypothesis of a no-deal cannot be ruled out.”
And leftist senator Didier Marie added: “Whether Brexit is hard or soft doesn’t really matter, because it will be painful no matter what.”
Jean Bizet, the chairman of the Senate’s European Affairs Committee, added that the emergency measures were needed to provide the government with the necessary “flexibility and reactivity” to deal with Brexit.
“For example, if nothing is done, a French person who has contributed to a pension scheme in the UK will not be able to transfer this contribution over to a French scheme, while British citizens living in France will become illegal immigrants,” one senator argued.
The draft law will prepare the country to keep passenger traffic, road transport and trade between France and the UK running in case London and Brussels fail to agree on the terms of the divorce by the March 2019 deadline.
France has stressed that while it is very “mindful” of the situation and rights of French nationals who have settled in the UK, it will also take appropriate measures regarding the situation of British nationals in France.
As such, the measures will help safeguard the interests of French nationals having worked or studied in the UK, by ensuring that their periods of employment and pension rights, as well as any qualifications acquired in the UK, are taken into account should they return to France.
But they will also seek to protect France-based British citizens and legal entities, who, once Brexit comes into force, will be subject to French law, particularly in terms of the right to entry and residence, employment, social rights and the right to welfare benefits.
The senators stressed that the content of the measures the government eventually adopts will depend on the outcome of the Brexit negotiations under way.
The two sides are currently at loggerheads over how to best deal with their only land border, between the British province of Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland.
The problem centres on a so-called backstop – an insurance policy there will be no return to a hard border in Ireland, a former focal point for sectarian tensions, if a future trading relationship is not in place in time.
On Tuesday, however, the bloc’s main Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said the EU will not conclude an exit agreement with Britain or give London a transition period after Brexit without a deal that prevents a hard border.
“We are still not at the 100 percent,” Mr Barnier said. “What is missing is a solution for the issue of Ireland.”
“Without an operational backstop there will not be an accord and there will not be a transition period. That is certain.”