The UMP's (Union for a Popular Movement) change of party name and of party structure was one of the promises made by Nicolas Sarkozy during his campaign for the UMP Presidency in 2014.[8] After his election in November 2014, Nicolas Sarkozy, the President of France from 2007 to 2012, put forward the request to the party's general committee to change its name to Les Républicains ("The Republicans") and alter the statutes of the party. The proposed statutes provided for, among other provisions, the election of the presidents of the departmental federations by direct democracy and consulting members on election nominations.[9] Nicolas Sarkozy wanted to change the name of the party in order to showcase the reunification of the different political views, from the social Gaullism of Henri Guaino to the right line of Patrick Buisson, into "one family".[10][8][11] As declared in an interview for the Journal du Dimanche, Sarkozy also wished to change the name in order to be ahead of his adversaries Alain Juppé and François Fillon (also belonging to the UMP) for the 2017 presidential elections.[12] This desire for changing the name was not received well by all members of the party. In an interview for BFMTV, Alain Juppé mocked the ex-French President for wanting to change the name of the UMP.[13] Additionally, Gilles Boyer, supporter of Francois Fillon, showed his reluctance regarding the change of name by tweeting, "We are republicans. We are not THE republicans."[10] This change of name was perceived by some journalists as an attempt to make the public forget the judicial problems linked to the UMP, especially the Bygmalion case, case in which some members of the UMP are suspected to have forged documents over the expenses of Nicolas Sarkozy's 2012 presidential campaign.[14][15][16]
Critics of the name change claimed it was unfair for Sarkozy to name the party "Republicans", because every French person is a republican if they support the values and ideals of the French Republic that emanated from the French Revolution, and as such the term is above party politics.[17] Left-wing associations and parties and 140 individuals, including 5 having "Républicain" as their last name, sued the UMP.[18][17] The court was in favour of the UMP's change in name, stating that the "manifestly unlawful disturbance" and the "imminent damage" alleged by the complainants have not been demonstrated.[18] The new name was adopted by the party bureau on 5 May 2015 and approved by the party membership on 28 May by an online "yes" vote of 83.3% on a 45.7% turnout after a court ruling in favour of Sarkozy.[19]
Founding congress
The change to the name "The Republicans" was confirmed at the party's founding congress on 30 May 2015 at the Paris Event Centre in Paris, attended by 10,000 activists.[20]Angela Merkel, chairwoman of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany, sent a congratulatory message to the congress. The Republicans thus became the legal successor of the UMP and the leading centre-right party in France.[21]
The organisation has been declared in the préfecture de Saône-et-Loire on 9 April 2015.[22] According to the statement of this declaration, its aim is to "promote ideas of the right and centre, open to every people who wish to be member and debate in the spirit of a political party with republican ideas in France or outside France".[citation needed] This party foundation was published in the Journal officiel de la République française on 25 April 2015.[23]
In order to decide which candidate will represent The Republicans for the 2017 presidential elections, a party's primary was organised in November 2016.[25] The activists of the movement could choose between 7 candidates: François Fillion, Alain Juppé, Nicolas Sarkozy, Jean-François Copé, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, Bruno Le Maire and Jean-Frédéric Poisson. François Fillon, with 44,1% of the votes, and Alain Juppé, with 28,6%, were the two candidates qualified for the second round of the election.[25] François Fillon won the second turn of the election with 66,5% of the votes and was therefore appointed as The Republicans' candidate for the presidential election in 2017.[26]
François Fillon suffered a historic defeat in the first round of the presidential election, as he was the first centre-right candidate in the history of the Fifth Republic who failed to continue to the second round.[27] This led to the victory of Emmanuel Macron,[28] leader of his newly created party La République En Marche!.[29] François Fillon finished third in the first round of the presidential election with 20,01% of the vote, behind Emmanuel Macron (24,01%) and Marine le Pen (21,30%).[30] This defeat is mainly due to the Penelopegate scandal, as François Fillon was considered the favourite candidate by the polls before these revelations.[31]
The election victory of Emmanuel Macron in 2017 altered the French political landscape.[32] After Emmanuel Macron was elected as president, he appointed three centre-right politicians in his government from The Republicans, namely Édouard Philippe as Prime Minister, Bruno Le Maire as French Minister of the Economy and Finance, and Gérald Darmanin as Minister of Public Action and Accounts.[32] The fact that three ex-members from The Republicans are now part of the government, has allegedly divided the political party based on views of whether or not the republicans should support the incumbent government.[32] Some members of The Republicans, such as Thierry Solère or Sébastien Lecornu, therefore decided to leave the party in order to join La République En Marche!, the new political party created by Emmanuel Macron.[32] Other members, like Franck Riester or Fabienne Keller, decided to create a new political party: "Agir".[32] Additionally, a parliamentary group including LR dissidents supportive of the government line, "The Constructives", was formed in the National Assembly, separate from the existing group.[33]
A month after the Presidential elections, the legislative elections took place in France. In the second round of the legislative elections in June, The Republicans won 112 seats in parliament, which is 82 less than the number of seats won by the UMP in 2012.[34][35] This result was the worst performance of a major centre-right political party in French history.[36]
On 11 July, the political bureau of The Republicans agreed to hold a leadership election for president of the party on 10 and 17 December;[37]Laurent Wauquiez was elected in a single round on the 10th of December, winning 74.64% of the votes.[38]Laurent Wauquiez's election for the head of the Party continued to divide The Republicans as 26 elected officials left the party between his election on the 10th of December and the 21st of February 2018.[39]
Since 2019
On 2 June 2019, a week after overseeing the worst result for the centre-right in its history in the European elections with 8.48% of the vote, Wauquiez announced his resignation as president of The Republicans.[40] On 13 October 2019, Christian Jacob, former Minister of the French Civil Service, was elected as President of the party, taking from interim President Jean Leonetti.[41]
In December 2021, Valérie Pécresse won the Republican congress, winning the centre-right to be the Republican candidate in the 2022 French presidential election.[43] She earned 4.8% of the 1st round vote, which was under the 5% reimbursement threshold.[44] Consequently, the party's funding was left in a critical condition and Pécresse launched an appeal, having been in €5 million in party debt.[45] In the 2022 French legislative election, the Republicans lost 56 seats and fell from 2nd to 4th place in terms of seats.[46]
In the 2022 leadership election, Eric Ciotti was elected with 53.7% of the votes against his main opponent, Bruno Retailleau, who received 46.3% to become the next leader of the party.[47] He ruled out a formal alliance with Macron's minority government in parliament, although he was open to negotiate a pension reform.[48] Ciotti has largely been described as right-wing and of belonging in the populist faction of the party.[49][50]
The Union for a Popular Movement was a centre-right political party in France that was one of the two major contemporary political parties in France along with the centre-left Socialist Party (PS). The UMP was formed in 2002 as a merger of several centre-right parties under the leadership of President Jacques Chirac. In May 2015, the party was renamed and succeeded by The Republicans.
Xavier Bertrand is a French politician who has been serving as president of the regional council of Hauts-de-France since the 2015 regional elections.
Christian Jacob is a French politician who has been the president of the Republicans party since 2019. Over the course of his career, he held several cabinet positions, including as the Minister of French Civil Service in Jacques Chirac's second term as President of France.
Éric Woerth is a French politician of The Republicans (LR).
Valérie Pécresse is a French politician who has served as President of the Regional Council of Île-de-France since 2015. A member of The Republicans (LR), she previously served as Minister of Higher Education and Research from 2007 to 2011 and Minister of the Budget and Government Spokeswoman from 2011 to 2012 under Prime Minister François Fillon. Pécresse represented the 2nd constituency of Yvelines in the National Assembly from 2002 to 2007 and again from 2012 until 2016.
Laurent Timothée Marie Wauquiez is a French politician who has presided over the Regional Council of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes since 2016. He is a member of The Republicans (LR), which he led from 2017 to 2019 following the resignation of Nicolas Sarkozy.
Nadine Morano is a French politician of the Republicans who has been serving as Member of the European Parliament since 2014. She previously was a member of the National Assembly and a minister.
Bruno Daniel Marie Paul Retailleau is a French politician who has presided over The Republicans group in the Senate since 2014. He has represented the Vendée department in the Senate since 2004. Retailleau also served as President of the General Council of Vendée from 2010 to 2015 and President of the Regional Council of Pays de la Loire from 2015 until 2017.
Catherine Vautrin is a French politician of the Republicans (LR) who served as a member of the National Assembly of France, representing the Marne department.
Franck Riester is a French politician who has been serving as Minister Delegate for Parliamentary Relations in the Government of Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne since July 2022. He previously served as Minister Delegate for Foreign Trade and Economic Attractiveness in the governments of Prime Ministers Jean Castex and Élisabeth Borne between 2020 and 2022. A former member of The Republicans, he founded and currently leads the centre-right Agir party.
Éric Ciotti is a French politician who has represented the 1st constituency of Alpes-Maritimes in the National Assembly since 2007 and is the president of The Republicans since 2022. Ciotti previously briefly served as First Deputy Mayor of Nice under Mayor Christian Estrosi in 2008, before he assumed the presidency of the Departmental Council of Alpes-Maritimes from 2008 to 2017.
Nora Berra is a French physician and politician who served as Secretary of State for Seniors (2009-2010) and as Secretary of State for Health (2010-2012) in the government of Prime Minister François Fillon from 14 November 2010 to 10 May 2012. From 2015 until 2017, she was a member of the Republicans.
Thierry Solère is a French politician who has served as the member of the National Assembly for the 9th constituency of Hauts-de-Seine from 2012 to 2022. He was a member of The Republicans (LR) until 2017, when he joined La République En Marche! (LREM).
A leadership election for the presidency of The Republicans (LR) was held on 10 December 2017, the first since the refoundation of the party in 2015, before which it was known as the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), and seventh overall including the UMP congresses.
Agir, officially Agir, la droite constructive, was a political party in France, established on 26 November 2017. The majority of its founding members were previously associated with the Constructive faction within the centre-right Republicans. Styling itself as a "liberal, social, European, humanist and reformist" party, Agir was founded by a group of 19 established politicians as an alternative to the Republicans. The party merged with Renaissance in 2022.
Florence Portelli is a French politician who has been serving as Mayor of Taverny since 2014. She has also been a regional councillor of Île-de-France since 2015.
Geoffroy Didier is a French lawyer and politician of the Republicans who has been serving as a Member of the European Parliament since 2017.
Virginie Duby-Muller is a French politician of The Republicans (LR) who has been a member of the National Assembly since the 2012 elections, representing Haute-Savoie's 4th constituency. Within her party, she has been serving as deputy chairwoman since 2019, under the leadership of chairman Christian Jacob.
Aurélien Pradié is a French politician who has represented the 1st constituency of the Lot department in the National Assembly since 2017. He has also held a seat in the Regional Council of Occitania since 2021, previously in office from 2016 to 2018. In addition to his work in Parliament, he was appointed secretary-general of The Republicans (LR) in 2019 after Christian Jacob was elected party leader, making him its third highest-ranking politician.
The 2021 The Republicans (LR) congress, also known as the Congress for France, was an organised internal primary held from 1 to 4 December. It was organised by the party in order to nominate the candidate that would represent it in the 2022 presidential election. Valérie Pécresse was chosen as the party's presidential nominee in a two-round voting process.
↑ No d'annonce: 1214 Paru le: 25/04/2015 Association: LES REPUBLICAINS. Identification R.N.A.: W715002794 No de parution: 20150017 Département (Région): Saône-et-Loire (Bourgogne) Lieu parution: Déclaration à la préfecture de Saône-et-Loire. Type d'annonce: ASSOCIATION/CREATION
↑ "Emmanuel Macron's long road to a second term as French president". RTÉ.ie. 18 May 2021. Retrieved 18 May 2021. These moves would seem to point towards a strategy of siphoning off the RN voters as well those of the centre-right Les Républicains. However, as past elections have demonstrated, this strategy might bolster unintentionally Macron's political rivals.
↑ "François Fillon appears in court over 'fake jobs' scandal". BBC. 24 February 2020. Retrieved 18 May 2021. Ahead of the 2017 presidential election, he won the centre-right Republican party's presidential primary, and in January 2017 was the clear frontrunner in the polls.
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148,862 (2021 est.)
