He found his number. This Tuesday, August 22, Emmanuel Macron picks up his phone to reach Eric Ciotti. The head of state personally invites the president of the Republicans (LR), on August 30, to a meeting with the other party leaders. This is the famous “major political initiative” promised in early August by the President of the Republic. The exchange is cordial. We scan the subjects of the moment, from the international situation to the proposals of the right on immigration.
The president of the National Rally, Jordan Bardella, and the leaders of the left, all invited on August 30, are not entitled to the presidential phone call. This respect of Emmanuel Macron towards Eric Ciotti is not fortuitous. The political destinies of the two men are now linked. The relative majority gives the right a pivotal role in the National Assembly. The heir to the UMP is the only potential partner of the executive, given their ideological proximity.
However, this interdependence does not change anything: the head of state and the president of LR have a distant relationship. The two men rarely see each other. Eric Ciotti only went to the Elysee Palace once under the presidency of Emmanuel Macron, in 2019, to attend, as quaestor of the National Assembly, the ceremony of wishes to the constituted bodies.
Rare exchanges
Exchanges are rare. On October 2, 2020, storm Alex hit the Alpes-Maritimes with unprecedented violence. The floods sweep the Roya, Vésubie and Tinée valleys; 18 people died there. Eric Ciotti is intimately concerned: his family is from Saint-Martin-Vésubie, one of the affected towns. Emmanuel Macron splits an SMS to his opponent, then a simple LR deputy. “I wanted to give you a more personal word of support. I know it’s your valley, your loved ones and your father who are affected.”
Sign of intimate affection? Rather a Republican message. Between the two men, neither hatred nor passion. Eric Ciotti does not have anti-macronism pegged to the body, like his predecessor at the head of the party, Christian Jacob, or the president of the LR deputies, Olivier Marleix. “When he talks about Macron, I don’t feel any personal adversity, underlines a relative. Nothing to do with Marleix, who gives the impression of settling personal scores.” Out of sight out of mind.
“Feeling overpowered”
It has not always been so. On July 14, 2016, the Promenade des Anglais was struck by tragedy: 86 dead. Emmanuel Macron is then Minister of the Economy, this does not prevent him from being among the first to telephone Eric Ciotti. They got to know each other with the file of the privatization of Nice airport. And Emmanuel Macron then flirts at all costs, especially on the Côte d’Azur. The mayor of Cannes, David Lisnard, is not far from joining him. The attack in Nice will also modify the links of the future president with Christian Estrosi, then first deputy mayor of the city.
Because, whatever the circumstances, politics is never far away with someone who secretly prepares his candidacy for the Elysée. From July 25, 2016, he went there to announce measures in favor of local tourism. He asked the prefect to install in front of him not the mayor of the city, Philippe Pradal, but his first deputy: Christian Estrosi, who happens to be president of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region. Make rounds of leg at Estrosi without taking the lead at Ciotti? There are “at the same time” that human nature does not allow, including Jupiter. “It’s very difficult to be good with both, laughs a friend of Eric Ciotti. Macron likes big gaps, but there it was not possible.”
One thing brings the two men together, neither of them is there to make feelings. Everyone reasons only according to the interests of the moment. Between 2017 and 2022, the deputy of the Alpes-Maritimes sets himself up as an implacable prosecutor of macronism. The right hopes to dislodge the head of state from the Elysée and lets go. Eric Ciotti portrays the president as an “immature teenager” suffering from a “feeling of overpowering”. “Emmanuel Macron is the worst president of the Fifth Republic,” he said in December 2018, at the height of the yellow vest crisis. This aversion finds its peak in the winter of 2021. Eric Ciotti assures during the primary on the right that he will vote for Eric Zemmour in the event of a second round against Emmanuel Macron. Here, no slippage. Strategy again. He then leads the campaign of a “respectable” Zemmour, in parallel with the rise of the far-right essayist. On April 10, 2022, on the evening of the first round, Ciotti did not call for a vote for Macron against Marine Le Pen, unlike Valérie Pécresse.
Quest for right-wing Macronist voters
The re-election of Emmanuel Macron is reshuffling the cards. The Head of State is no longer a target, he cannot represent himself. The relative majority in the Assembly gives a decisive role to the 62 LR deputies. Eric Ciotti is advancing on a crest line, inherent in his strategy. The new boss of LR is anxious to embody the opposition to the president, in order to represent the alternation in 2027. But he also wants to win back the right-wing electorate seduced by Emmanuel Macron. Knock often, without excessive brutality. Support sometimes, without dubbing. The skilful Ciotti indulges in this balancing act. As when he approves the pension reform, despite an internal rebellion. “20 to 23% of Emmanuel Macron’s electorate in the first round of 2022 comes from us, he confided in the spring. My attitude aims not to deprive us of this electorate.” “It was not a submission to Macron, but a strategic positioning,” he added a few weeks later.
His status as an opponent, Eric Ciotti reserves it for sovereign subjects, the president’s “blind spot”. The boss of LR thus asked “solemnly” Emmanuel Macron to receive him on the question of immigration, after the filing of two bills. A request that remained a dead letter. This complaint – combined with the good relations maintained with Elisabeth Borne – outlines another facet of the personality of Eric Ciotti: a quest for notability of the new boss of the right, tired of his image of “Mr. Security”. “Eric has been a collaborator for many years and has reached the light, notes a faithful. This light, he wants it to be recognized. He belongs to this generation which has never been a minister and needs to be recognized by its statute.”
From there to make a pact with Emmanuel Macron? The slayers of the Southerner distill the hypothesis, with psychologizing analyzes and clues. Here, a video where he discusses with Gérald Darmanin and Sébastien Lecornu. There, his announcement during a group meeting of an upcoming lunch with Nicolas Sarkozy, a staunch supporter of a government pact.
Between Ciotti and Macron, Sarkozy
The story, however, is more complex. Nicolas Sarkozy injured the president of the general council of the Alpes-Maritimes by supporting against his own macronist candidates for the legislative elections of June 2022; a real period of glaciation followed. To the point that Ciotti confided during his campaign for the presidency of LR: “Being supported by Sarko? Seen by the militants, it would be negative.” After his election as head of the party, the Azurean found his way back to rue de Miromesnil, but the strategic divergence remained, unavoidable – he summed it up in these terms in the spring: “Nicolas Sarkozy is pushing a lot for an institutional agreement between Emmanuel Macron and LR to open the redial. I don’t think you should do the redial.” He pushes the candidacy of Laurent Wauquiez and judges that macronism will have difficulty in succeeding itself. “The objective of Eric Ciotti as president of LR is not to give the party to Macron but to prepare the post-Macron, for a real right-wing presidency”, insists the MEP LR Geoffroy Didier.
And then there is Nice. The ambition of a lifetime. There is hardly any room for two macronists in the Riviera city. Eric Ciotti must keep his distance from the Head of State to constitute an alternative to his intimate enemy, Christian Estrosi, during the municipal elections of 2026. “If he goes to government, he joins Estrosi’s camp. then finished for Nice”, sums up an LR leader. This distant relationship definitely suits the Republican boss.