The deputy Éric Ciotti, representative of the hardest and most strident anti-immigration line, has won this Sunday the internal election for the presidency of Los Republicanos (LR), the main heir party of the traditional French right. Ciotti was facing Bruno Retailleau, leader of this political formation in the Senate, which embodied a more classic conservatism. The first has obtained 53.7% of votes, while the second has reached 46.3%.
Ciotti, 57, is a deputy for the southern department of the Alpes-Maritimes, whose capital is Nice. He belongs to a family that is partly of Italian descent. Ciotti's extremist positions against irregular immigration are very similar to those defended by Marine Le Pen and the extreme right in general.
The victory of Ciotti, who was the favourite, has perhaps been less comfortable than expected. He may have been affected by a scandal over the alleged fictitious jobs that his ex-wife, Caroline Magne, would have had. The prosecution opened a preliminary investigation into the case. The fictitious jobs of politicians' relatives, in jobs as parliamentary assistants, are a type of irregularities that were quite frequent in France, where there was a wide sleeve on the matter and few ethical prejudices. Former Conservative Prime Minister François Fillon was twice sentenced to jail for this kind of conduct, at first instance and on appeal, but appealed to the (Supreme) Court of Cassation.
In the last presidential elections, Ciotti said that he preferred the ultra Éric Zemmour to Emmanuel Macron at the Élysée. In the recent crisis of the Ocean Viking humanitarian ship, which spent several weeks wandering the Mediterranean with more than two hundred migrants on board, Ciotti applauded the firm position of the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, who refused to receive the ship in a port of his country, and lashed out at Macron for being "cowardly" and "powerless".
Despite the fact that the Republicans are a party in deep crisis, its 63 deputies in the National Assembly have high political value. The parties that support Macron, now in a minority in the Chamber, are interested in courting LR because his help could be decisive in moving forward with some key legislative initiatives such as pension reform. A priori Ciotti may be inflexible on some issues, such as the reform of the asylum and immigration law, but perhaps he will be more open on issues such as pensions. In any case, what the election of him at the head of the party demonstrates is the growing porosity between the French right and extreme right.
