A court in Paris has temporarily overturned the expulsion of the head of the conservative French party Les Républicains, Éric Ciotti. In an emergency ruling, the court declared the expulsion of Ciotti, which was announced by the party executive on Wednesday and renewed on Friday, to be invalid for the time being, as the newspaper “Le Monde” reported.
Ciotti must initiate main proceedings on the disputed issue within eight days, until which time he will remain head of the bourgeois-conservative party.
The court case was a further step in an unprecedented dispute that is putting the party of former President Nicolas Sarkozy to the test just two weeks before the short-notice parliamentary election. Ciotti had announced, without prior agreement, a cooperation with the right-wing nationalist Rassemblement National (RN), thereby triggering a wave of protests in his party and his expulsion. Nevertheless, Ciotti came to the party headquarters afterwards, took legal action against the expulsion and met with RN leader Jordan Bardella for dinner.
An alliance between the bourgeois right and Marine Le Pen’s party would be a break with the position of maintaining a firewall against the extreme right. The internal party dispute is now not only about Ciotti’s future, but also about whether the former People’s Party and the right-wing nationalists will cooperate in nominating candidates in the constituencies, or whether the Republicans will act independently, as the moderate wing of the party wants.
There is not much time left until the candidates are nominated. The parties must have named their candidates by Sunday evening at the latest.
In response to the defeat of his liberal forces in the European elections and the landslide victory of the right-wing nationalists, President Emmanuel Macron surprisingly dissolved the National Assembly and announced new elections for June 30 and July 7.
