Presidential: Éric Ciotti and Michel Barnier launch on the right, Laurent Wauquiez gives up

Published on : 08/27/2021 – 08:11

The pace picks up on the right. Laurent Wauquiez gave up, Thursday August 26, to run for the presidential election of 2022, while Michel Barnier announced his candidacy for a “reconciled France” and that Eric Ciotti was launching around a project of “strong right”.

While his decision was the subject of all speculation, the president of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region gave up appearing in the evening, believing that “the time has not come” for him.

“I do not want to add division to the division”, he explained, worrying that “the presidential candidatures on the right are multiplying in a worrying way”.

Aged 46, Laurent Wauquiez had been subjected to a cure of media silence since his departure from the head of the Republicans in 2019, following poor results in the Europeans.

He assured Thursday that he would now work to work “for the unity of a candidacy on the right” and “to ensure that the right clearly and strongly assumes its convictions”.

“A president who respects the French”

Two hours later, former EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier announced his candidacy, claiming at Figaro wanting to be “a president who respects the French and who makes France respect”.

Among the axes of his project, he pleaded on TF1 to “limit immigration and control it”, repeating his idea of ​​”moratorium”, and promised to “restore the authority of the State”, “a justice which is effective “,” to put work, merit at the center of our society “, without forgetting the fight against” climate change which will upset everything “.

Michel Barnier, 70, was a deputy, senator, sat in several right-wing governments in France in the 1990s and 2000s (European Affairs, Environment, Agriculture, etc.), and was European Commissioner twice from 1999 to 2014 , before leading the Brexit negotiations from 2016.

His entry into the running brings to four (with Éric Ciotti, Valérie Pécresse and Philippe Juvin) the number of candidates for a primary from the right and the center, which LR will resolve to organize if no one stands out naturally. Bruno Retailleau could also very quickly join the list.

Éric Ciotti, “so that France remains France”

At the start of the day, the LR deputy of the Alpes-Maritimes, Éric Ciotti, had created a surprise by putting himself in the ranks of a primary “so that France remains France” with “a project for more authority, more of freedom, more identity “.

This firm believer in immigration issues – to the point of attracting criticism of ideological proximity to the RN – had also pleaded for “that we return to land rights in favor of blood rights, because the ‘French soul is disintegrating “and for” the inclusion in the Constitution of our Christian origins “.

“I am on the right, I do not apologize for being,” hammered Eric Ciotti, boss of the largest LR federation in the Alpes-Maritimes where security and migration issues are particularly significant.

The landscape becomes clearer on the right, on the eve of a weekend rich in political returns: Valérie Pécresse in Brive, Éric Ciotti in the hinterland of Nice, Laurent Wauquiez at Mont Mézenc, while Bruno Retailleau, Philippe Juvin and Michel Barnier will be in La Baule.

Eight months before the first round of the presidential election, the question of the right-wing candidate is all the less settled as Xavier Bertrand, declared since March, categorically refuses to enter into a tie-breaking process.

Laurent Wauquiez, without citing him, regretted that “certain candidates explain that they will present themselves without accepting a common rule”.

It is, however, “a question of loyalty and mutual trust,” said Michel Barnier.

“If there are two candidates on the right, it is not even worth going there, he will have no chance”, warned Eric Ciotti, confident that “in the end, there will be only one candidate”.

According to a Harris Interactive poll published Wednesday, the right would make 16% in the first round with Xavier Bertrand and 13% with Valérie Pécresse.

With AFP