French conservative party leader backs alliance with Le Pen, prompting backlash (2024)

The leader of France's right-wing Les Républicains (LR) on Tuesday, June 11, backed an alliance in snap parliamentary elections with Marine Le Pen's far-right Rassemblement National (RN). "We need to have an alliance (...) an alliance with the RN and its candidates," Eric Ciotti told TF1 television, laying out a position that was met by strong opposition within his own party.

"I want my political family to move in this direction," Ciotti said. He said he had spoken to the far-right Rassemblement National leaders Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella. Le Pen hailed Ciotti's declaration as "courageous" in a statement to Agence France-Presse. Bardella on Tuesday night confirmed a deal was in the works. "I confirm there will be an accord between the Rassemblement and Les Républicains," he told France 2 television.

Key figures from LR were quick to denounce Ciotti's declaration and call for his resignation. Gérard Larcher, the president of the Sénat, said Ciotti "can no longer preside our movement and must give up his mandate of president of Les Républicains."

Bruno Retailleau, the head of LR's senators, who hold a majority in the upper house of Parliament, said the group had "unanimously reaffirmed what must be the clear and responsible line of the French right: remaining itself while keeping its independence and its autonomy vis-à-vis Macron's camp and Le Pen's camp." Olivier Marleix, the head of the LR group in the Assemblée Nationale, said: "Eric Ciotti speaks only for himself. He must leave from the presidency of Les Républicains."

Ciotti replied that there was "absolutely no question" of him resigning. "I am LR, I remain LR, I am the president of LR," he told BFM-TV. "I am receiving thousands of messages of support," he said.

'Personal line'

Speaking to TF1, Ciotti said that his decision was taken on a "personal line," and that LR is today "too weak" to oppose Macron's coalition and the "the unnatural alliance" formed by the left.

"It's an agreement that will concern the entire national territory," Ciotti explained, adding that all LR MPs who "wish to do so" would have no "RN competitors" facing them. "We need an alliance" with the RN to build "a bloc of the right, a national bloc," he added, despite calls from within his party not to enter into such an agreement.

"I think the country has never been so right-wing," Ciotti said. "It expects the right, it expects right-wing action. We can no longer rely on impotence, on communication, on a form of immobilism that has led us to where we are now."

Macron called the snap polls after the far right crushed his centrist alliance in Sunday's European Parliament elections. There are just 19 days until the first round on June 30.