Concern on French far right alliance

The leader of France’s traditional right-wing party has backed an alliance with the far right of Marine Le Pen, triggering a crisis within his own party.

Marine Le Pen and Eric Ciotti in 2021 photos. Picture: AFP

The leader of France’s traditional right-wing party has backed an alliance with the far right of Marine Le Pen in snap legislative elections, triggering a crisis within his own party and fury from the government.

The stunning announcement by the Republicans leader Eric Ciotti in a TV interview on Tuesday night is the first time in modern French political history that a leader of a traditional party has backed an alliance with the far-right National Rally (RN).

President Emmanuel Macron called the elections on Sunday for June 30 – with a second round on July 7 – a major gamble after the RN scored more than double the number of votes of his centrist alliance in the EU elections.

With fewer than three weeks to go before the first round, Mr Macron faces opposition alliances crystallising on the left and right and warnings that his bet could backfire.

A Harris Interactive-Toluna poll published on Monday suggested just 19 per cent of voters would back him, compared to 34 per cent for RN.

But Mr Macron ruled out resigning after the election.

“I am in it to win,” he said.

The forthcoming ballot has set alarm bells ringing across ­Europe, as it risks hobbling France – historically a key player in broking compromise in Brussels and support for Ukraine against the Russian invasion.

“We need to have an alliance while remaining ourselves … an alliance with the RN and its candidates,” Mr Ciotti told TV, adding that he had already talked to Ms Le Pen, a three-time presidential candidate, and RN party leader Jordan Bardella.

Ms Le Pen praised “the courageous choice” and “sense of ­responsibility” of Mr Ciotti, saying she hoped a significant number of Republican figures would follow him.

Mr Bardella told TV that his party would be supporting “dozens” of Republican candidates.

The Republicans trace their history to postwar leader Charles de Gaulle and is the political home of ex-presidents such as Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy.

Mainstream parties had traditionally shunned the far-right in a strategy known as a “sanitary cordon”.

Now “40 years of a pseudo sanitary cordon – which caused many elections to be lost – is disappearing”, said Ms Le Pen, now head of RN deputies in the lower house National Assembly.

But Mr Ciotti’s move, which he said was aimed at creating a “significant” group in the new National Assembly after the elections, risks tearing apart his own party.

The Republican Speaker of the upper house Senate, Gerard Larcher, said he would “never swallow” an agreement with RN and called on Mr Ciotti to resign.

Xavier Bertrand, another senior figure in the party who served as a minister during the Sarkozy presidency, called for Mr Ciotti to be excluded from the party.

Accusing him of “betrayal” for having “made the choice of collaboration with the far right”, he called on party members to vote to determine what they thought of the deal.

AFP