This is another explosion after the dissolution of the National Assembly. The president of the Republicans, Éric Ciotti, announced on June 11 to our colleagues at TF1 that he wanted an agreement with the National Rally for the upcoming legislative elections. The party is exploding.
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This is perhaps the death certificate for the Republicans that Éric Ciotti has just pronounced by announcing that he wanted an agreement with the National Rally for the legislative elections. An agreement to which Jordan Bardella opened the door yesterday Monday. The party leaders spoke to each other and therefore high-fived, reports Valérie Gas from the RFI political department.
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The RN wants to broaden its base and Éric Ciotti believes that the LR are too weak and need an alliance to preserve a group in the Assembly. The outgoing deputies who will follow him will therefore not have RN candidates facing them. The agreement also provides for what Éric Ciotti calls conquest constituencies for the LR. The objective is thus to fight Emmanuel Macron and form a new majority: “ a courageous choice », immediately greeted Marine Le Pen. “ Forty years of a pseudo-sanitary cordon, which caused many elections to be lost, is disappearing », Argued to AFP the boss of the National Rally deputies in the National Assembly.
If the agreement comes to fruition, it will be the first of its kind in France between the right and the far right. The boss of LR estimated that the right needed this agreement to preserve its representation in the National Assembly, which today has 61 deputies, many of whom are not on the party president’s line.
A large part of LR officials opposed to the agreement
This announcement indeed marks a point of no return for a large part of LR leaders who, even before Eric Ciotti’s speech, stepped up to denounce any alliance with Marine Le Pen’s party. From Xavier Bertrand to Jean-François Copé via Valérie Pécresse, Olivier Marleix and even Laurent Wauquiez… Senator Bruno Retailleau also dissociated himself by denouncing a “ personal line » by Éric Ciotti, just like Gérard Larcher.
Two first defections have already been reported. Vice-President Sophie Primas and the general budget rapporteur, Jean-François Husson, announced this Tuesday that they were leaving the Gaullist party after Eric Ciotti’s announcement. “ An alliance with the RN in the legislative elections is of course without me! I leave Les Républicains and continue the fight with the unanimous support of Gérard Larcher’s group (president of the Senate) and Bruno Retailleau (head of LR senators),” wrote Jean-François Husson on X, while Sophie Primas affirmed on the same social network that she was making this choice “ unwillingly », calling on the right to “ rebuild “.
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Éric Ciotti remains president of LR for the moment and says he is relying on the activists. But it is difficult to see how the party, torn since 2017 between a right-wing line and a centrist line, can survive this announcement that the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin, who comes from it, assimilates to the Munich agreements which pushes ” the Gaullist family in dishonor », perhaps in the hope of seeing Eric Ciotti’s opponents join the majority.