CIOTTI. Eric Ciotti, LR deputy for the 1st constituency of the Alpes-Maritimes is trying his luck for a fourth term. After the disappointment that was the presidential election for his party, the man on the right has competition but has a good lead at the end of the first round.
Look for a legislative result near you
[Mis à jour le 13 juin 2022 à 00h08] Eric Ciotti can breathe. In the first round of the legislative elections this Sunday, June 12, 2022, the candidate LR obtained more than 30% of the votes, 31.70% according to feedback from the Ministry of the Interior in the 1st constituency of the Alpes-Maritimes, ahead of more than six points the candidate of Ensemble Graig Monetti (25.92%) Anne-Laure Chaintron candidate Nupes, is credited with 20.42% of the votes and does not pass this first round. Eric Ciotti will therefore be on waivers in the second round. For this regular in the legislative elections, who has already been elected in 2007, 2012 and 2017, the parliamentary campaign should have been a formality. but the one who presented himself twice under the UMP label and once under the LR banner in 2017 encountered strong competition.
In the aftermath of a very complicated presidential election for Les Républicains, with the candidate Valérie Pécresse who, by far, achieved the worst score in the history of the party by collecting only 4.7% of the votes in the first round, the structure internal is in the process of being recomposed. Eric Ciotti, the most right-wing figure in the party, often compared to Eric Zemmour, will face in the second round an LREM candidate whose mentor is none other than a former LR, the mayor of Nice Christian Estrosi. Will he be able to access the post of deputy again after the second round of legislative elections?
Eric Ciotti committed to the future of the LR party
Arrived in second position in the primary from the right last December, his access to the second round and his performance in the debate between the candidates had created surprise within the LR party, making Eric Ciotti a figure in his political current. Since then, he has supported candidate Valérie Pécresse during the presidential campaign, regularly appearing at her political meetings. He is committed today for the legislative elections, hoping to be able to breathe new life into the party despite the historically low result of the latter in the presidential election. In an interview given to Figaro at the end of May, he declared that the LR party was “the one and only political force to have a credible, responsible and quantified project”. He also spoke about the multiple defections of members of his party who joined the presidential majority: “Next June, these candidates will experience defeat and dishonour,” he said.
After a turbulent presidential campaign and a final result that called into question the party’s ability to recover (the bar of 5% of votes collected in the first round not having been passed, campaign reimbursement costs have been reimbursed very little), Eric Ciotti hopes to be able to count on the voters who have already elected him three times. However, in this 1st constituency, he faces a major competitor: this is Graig Monetti, LREM candidate chosen by the mayor of Nice Christian Estrosi to face him and present in the second round according to the results of the first round. Sunday June 12. Chief of staff to the Minister of Higher Education Frédéric Duval and deputy mayor of Nice delegate for Youth, this 29-year-old “Estrosi candidate” wants to beat Eric Ciotti on his field. In a video posted on his Twitter on May 3, he launched: “I am the only one to be part of a positive approach, far from bitterness, systematic opposition and partisan divisions”, thus taking up the rhetoric of the political rally dear to Emanuel Macron. Of a right-wing tendency, since he himself affirmed that his candidacy was that of “the right of progress”, he nevertheless wants to oppose a line of the right that is more “social” than an Eric Ciotti with identity ideas. If, in 2017, Eric Ciotti had largely beaten the candidate LREM who faced him in the second round (with 56.21% of the votes for the LR), the situation is very different in this year of re-election of Emmanuel Macron and tumble LRs.
Deputy LR of the 1st constituency of the Alpes-Maritimes since 2007, Eric Ciotti is an active member of the National Assembly. Over the period from 2017 to 2022, he proposed 1,220 amendments in total, of which 11 were adopted, 27 pending, and 778 rejected. He was particularly involved in the issue of “controlled immigration, effective asylum rights and successful integration”, with 175 interventions in total. He also spoke more than 80 times on the subject of “Homeland security and the fight against terrorism”. These two files correspond in fact to the ideological and “hard right” lineage claimed by Eric Ciotti. There are also more than 80 interventions on the issue of “respect for the principles of the Republic”, and 52 on the recent “2018-2022 programming and justice reform”. Finally, Eric Ciotti is a member of the French section of the French-speaking parliamentary assembly and of the study group “conditions d’accueil des migrants”.
This is one of the weapons used by Eric Ciotti’s political adversaries (on the left and sometimes in his own camp) to try to destabilize him. Through the ideas he carries and the content of his programme, Eric Ciotti shares a close bond of proximity with the Rassemblement national. If he denies it, and although he continues to distinguish LR and RN, Eric Ciotti is regularly called upon to justify his position vis-à-vis Marine Le Pen. But it is to Eric Zemmour that the deputy of the Alpes-Maritimes is generally compared, because of striking ideological similarities. When he competed for the nomination of the LR primary last December, Eric Ciotti had made immigration the fetish subject of his program. He pleaded, among other things, for a return to jus soli in favor of jus sanguinis, and for the inclusion of the Christian origins of France in the Constitution. When communicating his intention to vote for the second round of the presidential election, Eric Ciotti had assured that he would not opt for the candidate LREM (comments made on the set of TF1 on April 10), even though the vote ” barrage” against the far right was Valérie Pécresse’s request to her constituents during her speech on the evening of April 10.
But above all, it is the calls from the foot of the president of Reconquest towards Eric Ciotti which maintain this comparison. Already, the day after the LR primary, he had sent an open letter to the voters of Eric Ciotti to join him in his campaign, then qualifying Eric Ciotti as “indisputable patriot” and “reliable and sincere straight man”. . In this case, for these legislative elections, no candidate from Eric Zemmour’s party will stand against Eric Ciotti, as announced by the former polemicist on Twitter. Saying he wanted to rebuild the right and build a “coalition of the rights” or a “national union”, he invited members of the RN, DLF and RN who wished to join him, promising not to compete with them in the constituencies. More specifically, Eric Zemmour has undertaken not to present a candidate against “Marine Le Pen, Eric Ciotti and Nicolas Dupont-Aignan”, choosing to address the deputy of the Alpes-Maritimes rather than the former candidate LR Valérie Pécresse.
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The Man in the Shadow of Christian Estrosi. This is how we could describe the beginning of Eric Ciotti’s political life. Because it is as chief of staff of Christian Estrosi, president of the general council of the Alpes-Maritimes, from 2003 to 2007, that this former parliamentary collaborator cut his teeth before launching into the arena. In 2007, the Niçois was elected deputy in the 1st constituency of the Alpes-Maritimes, obtaining 60.92% in the second round, and joined the law commission of the National Assembly. On the strength of this electoral success, Eric Ciotti joined Christian Estrosi’s list during the municipal election in Nice in 2008. Elected, he was appointed first deputy mayor, in charge of sustainable development, urban planning, works and trips.
But this victory hides a setback: he suffered a defeat in the cantonal elections in March 2008. Then, in December 2008, Eric Ciotti presented himself in another canton whose general councilor had resigned. He won this seat, then he was elected to the presidency of the General Council of the Alpes-Maritimes. In order to respect the rule of limitation of mandates, Eric Ciotti gives up his post of municipal councilor of Nice. Alongside his career in the provinces, Eric Ciotti is also national secretary of the UMP. In charge of security issues, the one who is nicknamed “the gentleman security of the UMP” often makes the headlines for his controversial bills. In 2010, Eric Ciotti presented a law aimed at punishing “two years’ imprisonment and a fine of 30,000 euros for the fact by the father or the mother of leaving their minor child, when the latter has been prosecuted or sentenced for an offence, violating the prohibitions and obligations to which it is subject”. After having raised heated debates, this law will be challenged.
Conversely, the “Ciotti” law, which provides for the suspension of family allowances in the event of prolonged absenteeism, was adopted in June 2010. In 2011 and 2015, Eric Ciotti was re-elected in the cantonal elections in the canton of Saint-Martin- Vesubia. He remains President of the General Council of the Alpes-Maritimes. He was also re-elected deputy in the 2012 and 2017 legislative elections in the 1st constituency of the Alpes-Maritimes.
Military service
Eric Ciotti is one of the 2022 presidential candidates who say they are in favor of returning to military service in France. This public position is not without consequence for the deputy of the Alpes-Maritimes. After investigation by several journalists, it turns out that Eric Ciotti sought the support of politicians during his youth to escape his own obligations in this area.