Presidential 2022: Laurent Wauquiez gives up standing for the LR primary – LCI

While the candidates are multiplying on the right, renounce him. Laurent Wauquiez will not run for the right-wing primary for the presidential election, corroborating sources told LCI on Thursday.

The president of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, largely re-elected last June, was one of the potential candidates for the 2022 election, even if he had withdrawn from national politics for two years against a background of protest within the political movement he chaired.

The former minister of Nicolas Sarkozy, who dreamed of himself in 2017 as the first opponent of Emmanuel Macron, formalized this position Thursday in the early evening. “Being a candidate for the presidential election is a decision that you take not because you simply want to, but because it is a moment when you feel in a position to rally your camp and reunite the French. I consider that for me this time has not come “, he wrote on social networks, claiming not to want “add division to division”.

“Candidates for the presidential election on the right are increasing worryingly, and some candidates even explain that they will run without accepting a common rule”, he continues. A barely veiled spike against Xavier Bertrand, who refuses to participate in a primary.

Laurent Wauquiez is part of the line “hard” within the Republicans, to the point of having aroused, by its positions, strong tensions as well as the departures of several right-wing personalities of the LR party.

The decision of the president of the region comes as another supporter of this right-wing line, MP Eric Ciotti, declared himself a candidate for the primary on Thursday morning. Currently, three other personalities have formalized their candidacy: Xavier Bertrand, who refuses the principle of the primary, Valérie Pécresse and Philippe Juvin. European Commissioner Michel Barnier is also expected to formalize his candidacy shortly.

In an interview given on July 30 to Figaro, Laurent Wauquiez had advanced “priorities” for France, assuring however wanting to play “collective” in order to win the right in 2022.