“It’s not going to happen like that,” says Jean-François Copé

“When this or that candidate allies himself with the extreme right, he is excluded,” replies the ex-LR boss to Éric Ciotti who assures that only LR activists can dismiss him.

Will Éric Ciotti still be president of the Republicans (LR) after the exceptional executive office on Wednesday afternoon? “I don’t think it’s going to happen like that.”, declared Wednesday June 12 the LR mayor of Meaux, Jean-François Copé, who will be present at this meeting. It is being held after Éric Ciotti made a pact with the National Rally (RN) with a view to the early legislative elections. At this stage, no other LR leader is following him in this adventure.

“From the moment you are not in line with the values ​​of the party, you are against the statutes, and from there, it becomes complicated to maintain you,” advances Jean-François Copé, ex-president of the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), the ancestor of LR. “When you are a member of LR, you adhere to the statutes and a charter of values. In this charter, it is clearly indicated that there must never be an alliance of any form whatsoever with the extremes”he recalls.

“The best proof is that when this or that candidate allies himself with the extreme right, he is excluded,” he emphasizes. Éric Ciotti does not see it that way. “Only activists could take it away from me [son poste]”, he argued on Tuesday after declaring that LR had “need an alliance” with the RN. A “individual approach whose personal motivations can be imagined”, comments Jean-François Copé, like other tenors of LR, who highlighted the RN’s score at the Europeans in Nice, the stronghold of Éric Ciotti.

Jordan Bardella “talk to yourself, with Eric Ciotti alone, that’s not how it works”, scathes the local elected official again. The president of the RN assured Tuesday evening on France 2 that “several dozen” LR candidates “outgoing or invested” will be “supported” by his party. “There is a line”, insists Jean-François Copé, “Those who adhere to it have the investiture, those who do not adhere to it do not have it.” He can’t imagine “two party candidates” in the same constituency, one aligned with the “line” and the other on the position of Eric Ciotti.