“I call on all activists to join us”: Éric Ciotti announces his departure from Les Républicains and the presidency of the party

The Alpes-Maritimes MP Eric Ciotti, whom Les Républicains had been trying in vain to exclude since his alliance in June with the RN in the legislative elections, announced this Sunday, September 22, that he was leaving the party and its presidency, thus opening the race for his succession. “My decision to leave LR will allow us to rebuild a large political family with clarity and independence,” the elected official believes in an interview posted online on the website of the Figaro.

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He launched his own party at the end of August, called the Union of the Right for the Republic (UDR). This decision comes three weeks before the hearing scheduled for October 14, where the courts were to rule on the exclusion by LR leaders of their president, who had refused to give up his functions and his office. “I have won three times (in court) and I had no concerns about the hearing on October 14,” emphasizes Éric Ciotti, who chairs a group of 16 deputies in the Assembly. But the hearing “no longer has any purpose, since I will have left the LR presidency and the LR party by then.”

A “grotesque caricature”

Assuring that he had informed both the leader of the LR deputies Laurent Wauquiez and Marine Le Pen of his decision, Éric Ciotti launched a new appeal to LR elected officials to join him in order to consolidate what he presents as an Italian-style union of the right, which would go from the centre-right to the extreme right. His decision comes the day after the announcement by LR Prime Minister Michel Barnier of the composition of his government, which includes several members of his former party such as Senator Bruno Retailleau, appointed to the Interior, or LR Secretary General Annie Genervard to Agriculture.

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“It will no longer be possible to work with those who are in Emmanuel Macron’s government,” he laments, stressing however that the president of the Association of Mayors of France (AMF) David Lisnard, the MEP François-Xavier Bellamy or Laurent Wauquiez “have not fallen into this grotesque caricature and this crude trap set by Emmanuel Macron.”

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After his alliance with the RN, Éric Ciotti has kept his constituency of Nice, but he has only managed to bring with him for the moment one LR deputy, Christelle d’Intorni, also in the Alpes-Maritimes. This departure now opens the way to the designation of the new president of the Republicans, for which Laurent Wauquiez could run, according to internal sources. The president of the group of 47 LR deputies in the Assembly, called La Droite républicaine (LR), has chosen not to participate in Mr. Barnier’s government after having refused the Ministry of Finance.