On Thursday, June 26th, the Union des Droites pour la République (Union of the Rights for the Republic, UDR), a new party allied with the Rassemblement National (RN) since the summer 2024 legislative elections, took the initiative for the first time to put forward a day’s worth of legislative proposals. The party intended to take advantage of this opportunity to break taboos and push through crucial reforms on immigration and electoral law, but it failed in the face of centrists’ resistance to any bold reforms.
Under the rules of the French National Assembly, each party represented has one day per month, in turn, during which it can freely submit bills of its choice for consideration by MPs. Thursday, June 26th, is the ‘parliamentary niche’ day for the UDR, a new group formed in the summer of 2024 following the split in Les Républicains (LR) between those who accepted the alliance with the RN and those who rejected it.
At the head of the UDR is Éric Ciotti, former president of the LR party and unsuccessful candidate in the right-wing primary for the 2022 presidential election. Today, his party, with its 17 MPs, forms an energetic tandem with the RN in the National Assembly. It embodies a less statist and less social line than the RN but is just as firm on immigration and security issues.
Among others, Ciotti has chosen two crucial issues to be examined by MPs during his parliamentary niche. The first, put forward by the UDR, is a highly symbolic text, as it seeks to regulate how bans on holding public office for elected officials are enforced right away, before all legal appeals are resolved. This proposal is a reaction to the scandal surrounding Marine Le Pen’s conviction in the European parliamentary assistants affair. At the end of March, the longtime RN candidate was handed a ban on holding public office with ‘provisional enforcement’—meaning it applied immediately, with the consequence that she may not be able to stand in the 2027 presidential election. “Certain fundamental principles of our criminal law are being undermined by provisional enforcement: the suspensive effect of appeal and the presumption of innocence,” argued rapporteur Brigitte Barèges. It “deprives citizens of the right to freely choose their representatives,” RN MP Bruno Bilde added.
The other bill was to ban mayors from performing civil marriages when one of the spouses is facing deportation. The text comes before MPs following a series of scandals in which local elected officials were prosecuted for refusing to perform marriages involving illegal immigrants—a common-sense response, but one that put them at odds with the law.
“Allowing illegal immigrants to benefit from marriage is tantamount to institutionalising fraud. Marriage cannot become a passport for those who flout our laws,” said conservative MP Hervé de Lépinau in defence of the bill.
To get these two bills passed, the challenge was to get the ‘common base’ MPs, i.e., those from Macron’s centre and the Republicans who broke away from the UDR, to vote alongside the RN and its ally. That was the only way to obtain a majority to pass the bill. But for Macron’s MPs, stepping back was a crucial image issue: they wanted at all costs to avoid giving the impression of “playing into the RN’s hands.” The ban on provisional enforcement of disqualification sentences was thus rejected by 185 votes to 120. The centrists opposed the UDR’s bill or abstained. The political signal sent is very clear: there is no question of reversing the legal provision that allowed Marine Le Pen to be excluded from the presidential race.
During the second debate—on the law on marriages for illegal immigrants—the LR MPs were conspicuous by their absence, thereby giving the Left all the weight it needed to oppose the bill. Ciotti took advantage of the votes to denounce the alliance between LR and Macronism, de facto supported by the far Left.
Faced with a wave of hatred, personal attacks and dirty tricks, Ciotti’s MPs were forced to withdraw the bill before the final vote, even though it was supported by a majority of French people. This sad spectacle proves the total collusion between the weak right, the centre and the left to prevent any reform.
