No alliance with Le Pen: German conservatives threaten to kick Les Republicains out of EPP

The potential team-up of the French conservative Les Républicains (LR) with the far-right party of Marine le Pen is making waves in Germany, with the conservative CDU/CSU threatening to kick them out from their common EU party, the EPP.

The French right-wing Les Républicains is currently in disarray after their president, Éric Ciotti announced on Tuesday (11 June), that the party will join forces with the populist far right Rassemblement National (RN) of Marine le Pen, for the upcoming snap legislative elections.

The German CDU/CSU is also getting involved, and is threatening to kick out LR from their common political family in the European Parliament, the European People’s Party (EPP), if they go along with Ciotti’s plan.

“If the French Les Républicains, really do take this path to the right, there will no longer be a place in the EPP for this once proud party, which is marginalising itself through such ingratiation,” German MP Jürgen Hardt and spokesperson of the CDU/CSU on foreign policy, told Euractiv on Tuesday (11 June).

The CDU/CSU has a long-standing commitment against working together with any far-right party.

While the CDU/CSU parties have somewhat softened their stance on their firewall with the far-right in recent months, openly flirting with the idea of teaming up with the hard-right Fratelli d’Italia of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, a collaboration with Le Pen is still considered off limits.

Potential partners of the EPP must be pro-European, pro-NATO, pro-rule of law and pro-Ukraine, as the CDU/CSU repeatedly outlined during the European election, in line with the EPP’s lead candidate Ursula von der Leyen’s stance.

The party of Le Pen is currently not meeting these criteria.

Ciotti’s announcement has been met with a serious backlash from within his own party, with several senior members of the LR calling for his resignation.

Their German counterparts are also confident, that the LR will refrain from working with the far-right, as some of their members have already suggested.

“I believe it is possible that the declaration by the chairman of the LR has no validity among the members and means the end of his political career,” said Hardt, adding that “those I know in the LR think differently from Ciotti.”

(Edited by Aurélie Pugnet/Rajnish Singh)

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On Tuesday (June 11), Éric Ciotti, president of the French Republicans (LR), announced that he would be joining forces with the National Rally (RN) for the legislative elections, while most of the Gaullist party's executives are calling for his resignation.