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00:00 Hello, everyone.
00:02 I'm François Picard.
00:03 No end to the political drama in France since Sunday night.
00:07 First, that record tally by the far-right in European elections.
00:10 The president's shock dissolution of Parliament that followed.
00:13 The drama has turned into a soap opera for the party of former conservative president
00:18 Nicolas Sarkozy.
00:20 Éric Ciotti excluded as head of Les Républicains.
00:23 This after announcing an alliance with Marine Le Pen's national rally.
00:26 Earlier in the day, he ordered staff to evacuate the party's Paris headquarters, where we can
00:32 cross now to Jean-Émile Jamin.
00:35 Jean-Émile, what's the latest?
00:38 Sorry, François.
00:41 Well, the latest is that there is a storm brewing in the Les RĂ©publicains party, and
00:47 that is all down to the exclusion or the expulsion of their party leader, Éric Ciotti, after
00:55 those meetings today at 3pm, not taking place in the party headquarters.
01:00 That's after he locked them.
01:01 And well, we have a response immediately from the man himself.
01:05 It was on Twitter.
01:07 And he says that meeting organized this afternoon was implemented in flagrant violation of our
01:13 statuses as a Les RĂ©publicains party.
01:16 He says that none of the decisions taken in that meeting have any legal consequences.
01:22 He has threatened legal and criminal action against the party leaders.
01:26 And he says he remains the president of Les RĂ©publicains elected by the members.
01:33 It's not, though, a position shared by the main constituencies of his party, including
01:39 one of those who might take over as leader.
01:43 Les RĂ©publicains are a family with a history and identity and a future.
01:50 I truly believe this.
01:52 We represent stability and it isn't because we're currently a minority that we can't weigh
01:56 in on public debate.
02:00 It was essential we make clear that our name cannot be claimed by others who don't have
02:04 the legitimacy nor the right to.
02:13 So Annie Gennevard, one of two leaders who will jointly assume the position, at least
02:19 according to the Les RĂ©publicains statement, not according to Ciotti himself.
02:24 She was the general secretary of the movement appointed by Ciotti in 2023, January last
02:31 year and now takes the position from him trying to just steady the ship after his comments
02:38 of an alliance with the national rally that was yesterday, which sparked this furious
02:43 debate.
02:44 And now the question of where Les RĂ©publicains stand ahead of those parliamentary elections
02:49 in just under three weeks time is the main question on everyone's lips.
02:53 But a defiant Ciotti nonetheless, and not budging at least.
02:57 That's his position so far.
02:59 And once again, Jean-Emile, the doors of the building behind you, you say, are locked right
03:03 now?
03:05 Yes, this is the headquarters of Les RĂ©publicains, just a couple of feet away from the National
03:12 Assembly, and at 12pm Ciotti made that announcement to say that he would be closing the door.
03:20 Earlier he said that at 12pm it would be locked for those who wanted to come in, the workers
03:25 of Les RĂ©publicains.
03:26 But he cited security issues just off the back of his comments and his alliance with
03:31 the national rally, which sparked all of that dissent, at least from the ranks of his own
03:38 party.
03:39 And they had the meeting just about 150 metres away in the Musée Social, the social museum,
03:45 and that's where he wasn't in attendance, Ciotti, with most of the stronger leaders,
03:51 if you can say, of Les RĂ©publicains present.
03:53 So we had the likes of Xavier Bertrand, who did speak after this meeting, saying that
03:58 they need those deputies against this villainous agreement to come together.
04:03 He called it a villainous agreement.
04:06 Xavier Bertrand, Valérie Precresse, the former presidential nominee for Les Républicains
04:12 back in 2022, who had a failed presidential bid and then was replaced by Éric Ciotti,
04:18 she came out and said there is no place for traitors or small-time putschists.
04:23 Quite a direct aim at Ciotti indeed.
04:27 And then she was, it almost seemed like her word was the final nail in the coffin for
04:31 his future.
04:32 It was a unanimous agreement after all from everyone gathered there in the chamber.
04:36 So now, again, the question is where the Republican Party will align itself in terms of coalition
04:42 agreements, but first they have to actually find out what the future of Ciotti is, if
04:47 he does take a legal challenge, and how that will unfold.
04:50 Yeah, even though the party got a little over 7% in European elections, it still carries
04:55 a lot of weight.
04:56 We just saw images there of the president of the Senate, who's a member of Les RĂ©publicains,
05:02 GĂ©rard Larcher.
05:03 Now what is a traitorous act for some is music to the ears of Marine Le Pen's formation.
05:11 Let's listen to the leader of her party in those upcoming legislative elections, Jordan
05:21 Bardella.
05:22 I'm delighted that Éric Ciotti has responded positively to this call, and I can confirm
05:28 that there will be an agreement in these legislative elections between the national rally that
05:33 I chair and Les RĂ©publicains, and there will be a certain number of outgoing RĂ©publicains
05:38 MPs who we will support.
05:41 For the record, Jean-Emile Ciotti, he's from Nice, where his party fared sixth last Sunday
05:48 in European elections, a distant sixth.
05:53 What happens next?
05:57 Even the mayor of Nice has come out and blasted Ciotti for those comments now.
06:02 So in his hometown of Alpine-Maritime, where Les RĂ©publicains had even sought to name another
06:08 candidate possibly to take over him as deputy.
06:11 Such is the, I wouldn't go as far as to say a civil war within the party, but certainly
06:16 the fractured relationship.
06:19 And so they find themselves at a crossroads, very much the soul of the party under discussion.
06:24 They hardly garnered any vote at all in the European parliamentary elections, just a 7.3%.
06:30 That's only enough for about six seats.
06:32 That has been a common theme, so it's not too much of a surprise with the national rally
06:38 getting over 31%, and it just shows how strong the extreme right of France has become and
06:44 why the question has been asked of Ciotti, where he should be aligning.
06:48 With half that vote was Emmanuel Macron's Renaissance bloc, at least the current ruling
06:54 party of France.
06:56 And so the center movement that Macron is trying to consolidate following speeches today,
07:03 at least trying to mitigate for that risk of going either extreme right or extreme left,
07:08 they will be seeing if they can at least lure the more moderate parts of the right-wing
07:12 RĂ©publicain.
07:15 Then you've got the left-wing coalition, which looks like it might be taking off the ground,
07:19 and that also puts Les RĂ©publicains just in a spot of bother in terms of knowing that
07:24 if they want to make a stand, if they want to have some kind of political sway, they
07:28 might very well have to choose some allies ahead of those parliamentary elections.
07:33 Coalition is very much the name of the game.
07:34 Valérie Précrèse, the former president of the party, said that they weren't going to
07:40 entertain either the far right or Macron's Renaissance, but the far right themselves,
07:47 as Jordan Bardella mentioned, said that there was confidence that there were members of
07:51 Les RĂ©publicains who would definitely be supported by his party.
07:55 Then on the other side, there have been all those dissenting voices following everything
08:00 that's happened with Ciotti today, who you could argue were more moderate and also might
08:06 hark back memories of the likes of GĂ©rard Darmanin, the current interior minister, or
08:10 even Bruno Le Maire, the economy minister, trading places and moving to Renaissance from
08:15 Les RĂ©publicains.
08:16 So there is a bit of a crossover potentially, but now the questions are going to be asked
08:21 in full detail, you might think, with the new leadership of Annie Génévard and François
08:27 Xavier Bellamy as well, together with her leading the ship, François Xavier Bellamy,
08:32 the candidate for the European parliamentary list, at least for Les RĂ©publicains.
08:37 A lot to deliberate and just five days to go before campaigning starts for that parliamentary
08:41 election and we'll see where to for the Republican right-wing party.
08:46 Jean-Ami Giammine reporting live outside Les RĂ©publicains headquarters, very much from
08:50 what you're describing there.
08:52 The French political landscape crystallizing into those three distinct blocks ahead of
08:58 that June 30th first round, the far left, the far right rather, a coalition of left-wing
09:04 parties and in the center, Emmanuel Macron upstaged by all the drama inside Les RĂ©publicains,
09:12 what used to be France's largest party.
09:15 The French president far from staying above the fray, staging a press conference this
09:21 Wednesday, making it clear he'll be hitting the campaign trail over the next 18 days.
09:26 Solange Mougin has more.
09:27 Arriving to kick off a political campaign, but first Emmanuel Macron drove home a main
09:35 point that dissolving parliament was necessary.
09:40 What would you have said to me if I stood before you on Sunday night when 50% of the
09:45 French people voted for the extremes, that I'm not doing anything, that I'm not changing
09:50 anything?
09:51 You'd have said, he's lost touch.
09:54 Everyone was saying the far right is coming in 2027, that the election will give the keys
09:58 of power to Marine Le Pen.
10:00 Everyone was making their own little calculations and pulling their punches.
10:04 Well, no, I don't want to give the far right the keys to power in 2027.
10:11 The president made a slew of policy announcements.
10:14 He plans on suspending election reforms in New Caledonia, banning cell phones and social
10:18 media for young children, building eight nuclear reactors and launching a debate on secularism.
10:25 But above all, Macron reiterated his main point, that the far right national rally party
10:30 is unfit to govern.
10:32 They do not have miracle answers.
10:34 All that they say is this isn't good.
10:37 They're the incarnation of no.
10:38 When things aren't going well, this is what we all do.
10:40 We send a message and we sit down to talk and listen.
10:43 But it's not because there's a messenger that that party has the answers.
10:47 The national rally does not have the answers to this sense of insecurity.
10:53 Both an explanation of his dissolving of parliament and also a pledge to win votes, Emmanuel Macron
10:59 once again entered the ring of a rapid fire campaign to try and wrest back some power
11:05 in the National Assembly.
11:07 For more, let's cross to Renaud Foucault, senior lecturer in economics at Lancaster
11:12 University.
11:15 First off, your reaction hearing Macron's explanation for that shock dissolution of
11:22 parliament?
11:23 Well, Macron, I think, in a way, I think he has clearly a point that everyone was betting
11:29 on 2027 being all but won by Marine Le Pen.
11:34 So in a way, sort of understand that he's trying to make a gamble to say, OK, let's
11:38 try something else.
11:39 But then if you listen to his speech, it was a very, very long speech musing about social
11:45 media, Internet for young people, secularism.
11:48 It was almost as if nothing happened, while at the same time, there are a lot of dynamic
11:53 things happening on either side of Macron, on the left and on the right.
11:57 They're consolidating, there seems to be wind in the back, they're trying to build alliances.
12:02 And he felt a little bit disarmed in between those two.
12:05 And something that I find very surprising is that he pushed a lot against the far right,
12:09 but at the same time, this is a very Macron expression, at the same time, he pushed a
12:14 lot against the far left, saying that the far left was not part of the Republican parties,
12:19 meaning that when we have these three parties final round in the next elections, it's not
12:27 guaranteed that he will push to remove his candidate if they are ranked third.
12:31 And that might prove to be a key in the possible victory of Marine Le Pen.
12:35 It's a two round system, just to remind our viewers.
12:38 So we have initial polls from some institutes, I'm not sure how thorough or accurate they
12:47 are, but they put Macron's party in third place.
12:50 Of course, that doesn't give us a clear idea of what the next parliament will look like
12:55 on the evening of July 7th.
12:57 No, of course, we have no idea at the moment.
13:00 And really, the key will be how many voters move, because if voters show up and come to
13:05 vote, it's very likely that they will have three parties in the second round.
13:08 And so then even with 40%, Le Pen can have a massive wave of new MPs.
13:15 While if fewer people vote, there might be more two party competition.
13:19 That's one thing.
13:20 The second thing is, will the left call to vote for the centre?
13:22 Will the centre call to vote for the left?
13:25 And then, of course, in the most likely event of a hung parliament, it's a completely open
13:30 question what happens.
13:31 So in the French constitution, the president can pick a prime minister.
13:35 Now, there is a long history of cohabitation.
13:38 So if there is another majority, it's pretty clear that he will give the keys of the prime
13:43 minister office to Jordan Bardella, to the Rassemblement National.
13:46 But if it's like 35, 35, 35%, there is absolutely no rule set in stone.
13:53 In 2022, France has shown that they had big difficulties to deal with minority government
13:58 building coalition has been very, very complex to do.
14:01 Now, what happens if they have to build with building majorities on a case by case basis
14:05 without an obvious leading party or even worse with the Rassemblement National at 40% with
14:11 the other fund agreements?
14:13 This is completely uncharted territory.
14:15 We have no idea what happens.
14:17 And I suspect none of the main parties is very clear about what will happen after the
14:21 second round.
14:22 Renaud Foucault, sitting outside of France where you are right now, what are people telling
14:27 you?
14:28 What's happening?
14:29 Well, we are based in the UK where at the moment we are expecting some sort of return
14:34 to normality after almost 10 years of Brexit madness.
14:39 And that's the feeling that there is a bit of a repetition of the candidates debate later
14:42 today.
14:43 There's a candidate debate later today, and a lot of people mentioned Macron's dissolution
14:48 announcement as his David Cameron moment, where not knowing what to do, he decided to
14:53 call for a referendum thing.
14:54 Yeah, sure.
14:55 It will sort things out.
14:57 Well, clearly in the UK, it was the beginning of the end.
15:00 And we went on for a long, long, long journey of rebuilding the country and rebuilding trust
15:04 in political parties, rebuilding trust in institutions.
15:07 And I think a lot of people are scared that the same happens to France now.
15:10 I'm not sure.
15:11 I think the situation is quite different.
15:12 There is still a lot of hope that France can learn to deal with the new reality of not
15:18 having two blocs and a clear majority.
15:20 But clearly, this is a brand new world and nobody expects anything specific at the moment.
15:26 Is putting on the same plane the left and the far right, is that a winning strategy?
15:34 I think at the moment, it is to me a strategy that cannot be sustainable in the second round,
15:40 because if Macron is very low in the first round, he will basically disappear.
15:45 So I think in some way at the beginning, what Macron was trying to do is trying to convince
15:51 people of the Social Democrats and the center-right to join with him.
15:55 And I guess the center-right is not impossible, but I guess it came as a big surprise that
16:00 the left, the far left, the green, everyone seemed to have an agreement that came very
16:04 quickly and that seemed to cancel out two years of complete infighting.
16:08 So if I have to say any group at the moment having an advantage, a surprise advantage,
16:14 it would mostly be the left.
16:15 How far will it go?
16:16 I'm not sure.
16:17 But the left is clearly the one that are the most surprisingly organized for the first
16:21 time since François Hollande's presidency.
16:24 François Hollande, who was a socialist.
16:26 And you know, you were talking earlier about the return to normality in the U.K. election
16:30 campaign.
16:31 You still have where you are two big tent parties that have lots of different factions
16:37 in them, from moderates to hardliners.
16:40 In France, the two big tent parties used to be the Socialist Party and Les RĂ©publicains.
16:45 We've watched the soap opera unfold this Wednesday there.
16:49 Will there ever be a return to big tent parties in France?
16:52 Well, at the moment, I think we have for the first time in a long time in France, three
16:58 big tent parties, some enlarged Front National, some enlarged Socialist far left and some
17:05 big center.
17:06 Two tent parties is what might happen in three weeks if Macron's center starts to dissolve.
17:13 But then you also see what happens in countries like Italy when the far right has to govern.
17:18 Then they have to make a lot of compromise.
17:20 You've seen that Marine Le Pen has already moved back from five years ago on the European
17:24 Union.
17:25 You've seen that today, Jordan Bardella announced that finally, after two years of shouting,
17:29 they're not going to come back on the pension reform.
17:32 They also have a lot of U-turns to make on a lot of policies that are conflicting with
17:37 the European Union.
17:38 So it's not impossible that in five years time, you have a big right and a big left
17:42 emerging from this election.
17:43 This might be also the beginning of the end of the Macron experience.
17:46 He's been destroying for seven years the left and the right, and now it's his own center
17:51 which might start to implode.
17:53 And what, return to the old system?
17:55 Well, return to the old system in a way that looks more like what most European countries
18:00 look like at the moment, meaning that the right has a very strong populist right component
18:05 and the left has a very strong populist left component, and maybe a more difficult time
18:10 for centrists.
18:11 I think this is the case in many, many countries at the moment.
18:13 One final quick question for you, Renaud Foucault.
18:18 If Jordan Bardella is going back on revoking pension reform, it's because he wants to make
18:24 a deal with conservatives who were for it.
18:29 Is it going to be, as an economist, are we headed for, right now France has a 5.5 percent
18:37 of GDP, huge budget deficit.
18:40 Are we headed for more uncertainty or will the dust settle in the end?
18:44 Imagine Bardella taking the keys of Matignon on the morning after the election.
18:48 There will be massive pressure on him.
18:50 There will be investors betting against the French debt, meaning interest rates on the
18:54 debt raising.
18:55 The situation will be extremely difficult.
18:57 You'll be reminiscent of what happened to Lee Strauss in England.
19:00 At that moment, he will have to tell to the market, I'm here to reinsure you.
19:04 And I guess it's part of the bet of Macron that might succeed of beating the far right,
19:07 that the moment he takes the key, if he really tries to do anything remotely controversial,
19:13 he will be in huge, huge, huge economic trouble, meaning that he might have to choose between
19:17 being reasonable and then completely disappointing his voters and maybe having another far right
19:22 party to his right emerging or some other populist left, or he would have to look like
19:27 the more extreme version of the Rationale Nationale of two years ago.
19:31 And then it's a very, very dangerous situation for France.
19:34 Renaud Foucault, many thanks for joining us from the UK.