2024 The Republicans alliance crisis
The 2024 Republicans alliance crisis within the French right-wing party The Republicans (LR) stemmed from an alliance between its president Éric Ciotti and the far-right party National Rally (RN) for the snap legislative elections of 2024, called after President Emmanuel Macron dissolved the French National Assembly. Initially intended to cover "between 70 and 80" constituencies, the alliance materialized in 61 constituencies, including two incumbent LR deputies.
Described as a political revolution by the LR president and a thunderclap by the media, this move was contested by 700 members of LR's national council, who took legal action, and nearly all of its deputies and senators. The LR political bureau unanimously voted to expel Éric Ciotti, accusing him of conducting secret negotiations without consulting his political family or activists and violating party statutes. Ciotti, however, disputed this expulsion. This marked the first time a major party, if its legal bodies validated the plan, would enter a national coalition with the National Rally, breaking the traditional Republican front against the far right.
The crisis led to the nomination of two groups of candidates, both claiming to represent The Republicans, often in the same constituencies. On one side, Éric Ciotti endorsed around 60 candidates, half of whom were not LR members, and urged support for RN candidates in other constituencies. The Ministry of the Interior classified them under the Union of the Far Right label. On the other side, the party's nomination committee endorsed 400 candidates, including all incumbent deputies except Éric Ciotti and Christelle D'Intorni.
Two deputies were elected in the first round: Christelle D'Intorni from the RN alliance and Philippe Juvin for The Republicans, with only 56 LR candidates qualifying for the second round. In the second round, sixteen additional candidates backed by Ciotti and the RN were elected, surpassing the minimum of fifteen deputies required to form a parliamentary group in the National Assembly. These seventeen deputies formed a separate group in the Seventeenth Legislature of the Fifth Republic, named "To the Right!". The Republicans, meanwhile, secured thirty-nine deputies.
On 31 August 2024, with the party's crisis still unresolved, Éric Ciotti founded the "Union of the Right for the Republic", echoing the former Gaullist party Union of Democrats for the Republic (UDR). On 22 September 2024, he announced his departure from The Republicans, leaving the party presidency vacant as of 30 September 2024. Days earlier, for the first time in over a decade, The Republicans returned to power, joining the government of Michel Barnier, which allocated twelve ministerial positions to them.
On 15 October 2024, LR's political bureau unanimously appointed a collective leadership comprising Annie Genevard (secretary general), François-Xavier Bellamy (executive vice-president), Michèle Tabarot (president of the National Nomination Committee), and Daniel Fasquelle (national treasurer). This team managed the party until a new president, Bruno Retailleau , was elected in 2025. The bureau also unanimously tasked Laurent Wauquiez, president of the Republican Right group in the National Assembly, with laying the groundwork for the party's renewal (ideas, name, organization).