A few months before the European elections, which are crucial for Europe and France, the republican right has the opportunity to have a candidate who has already strongly defended the interests of our country in Strasbourg and Brussels. It is precisely by demonstrating what it alone can bring to the French people that the republican right will be able to regain its place. Today, the challenge for the right is to expand the space that belongs to it between Macronism and Marinism. How can they avoid being mere supporters of the former or the front-runners of the latter? How can they regain the momentum and leadership of a major governing force? What is now the added value of the right, its originality? Why would the French people be interested in their proposals again? How can they clearly show the profound differences with the two dominant parties of today, the National Rally and Renaissance? Where is the right-wing that declares itself republican heading?
Except for very rare moments, this right, to which I belong, has never governed only through the union of the right and the center, more or less broad, always necessary. De Gaulle, Pompidou, Giscard, Chirac, Sarkozy: all of them have cultivated this unity despite the difficulties. This union remains essential. It is natural because, to varying degrees, we all stand for freedom, order, the market economy, financial rigor, simplification, trust, reduction of compulsory levies, secularism, control of migration flows, decentralization, Europe, national independence, sustainable development reconciling ecology and economy, organized free trade, solidarity towards the most vulnerable, social dialogue, the preservation of the healthcare system, the reform of the national education system, the promotion of work values, the relaunch of nuclear energy… This is why Jacques Chirac had given all their place to centrists during the formation of the UMP [Union for a Popular Movement] in 2002. This grouping, whose majority Senate currently assumes the legacy, was preferable to the current situation where the center parties have joined a Renaissance list.
The political necessity of union to become a governing force also protects the right against the temptation of engaging in a marriage of opposites with the heirs of a counter-revolutionary right that has harmed France so much throughout history, especially during the “national revolution” implemented under the protection of the Nazi occupier. The recipes of this other right, protestant, reactionary, demagogic, authoritarian, intolerant, lead to impoverishment, disorder, withdrawal, and isolation of France. Giving in to them would lead to disaster. Not just of the right: that of France and Europe, at the worst moment of the crisis with Russia!
