Republican leader Eric Ciotti, excluded yesterday from his own party for having opened an agreement with Marine Le Pen, announced that he has taken legal action to contest the political office’s decision. Tajani: “The positions of the EPP are very distant from those of Le Pen”:
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Political earthquake in France. Eric Ciotti has been expelled from the Républicains unanimously from a political office that was held yesterday afternoon in his absence, after the president of the party had made known his intention to ally himself with the far-right leader Marine Le Pen, in view of the early legislative elections. But Ciotti doesn’t give up.
Arriving this morning at the Républicains headquarters, he continued to repeat that he was still the president of the party, denying any legality to the meeting that decreed his exclusion from the party. Ciotti then announced that he had filed a complaint with the judiciary against the decision voted yesterday by the leaders of the Républicains, a party which sits in the EPP in Europe. “I am party president, I go to my office, that’s all,” he told journalists present when he arrived. He then denounced the “coup de main” of his opponents, who decreed his expulsion for having – the first in the history of the movement – opened an agreement with Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National. “I filed a complaint with the Paris court to challenge the validity of this senseless decision,” he added. According to Ciotti, yesterday’s meeting was “a meeting of people who came together without any logic to decide on my exclusion”.
Ciotti also issued an ultimatum to his now former party colleagues: “The right is about to come to power”, he told France 2, the outgoing LR deputies “have 48 hours to join me”, he added, “we will have a role to play in Jordan Bardella’s government”, certain that the 28-year-old, president of the Rassemblement National, will be in government after the early elections of 30 June and 7 July, called by Macron after the dissolution of Parliament. “On June 30 there will be a historic opportunity to present a true right-wing program,” he declared, “We will win these elections, the right will come to power, we will bring order to the streets and to the accounts,” he added, quoted by ‘ Le Figaro’. “Jordan Bardella will be prime minister and the Républicains will have ministers.” And we will see Bardella Ciotti for lunch at 12 today.
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Meanwhile, the Républicains party has called a new meeting of the political office to “validate Ciotti’s expulsion”. We read it in a statement released this morning.
For the EPP, no alliance in Europe is possible with the far right, and Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani also reiterated this this morning: “The positions of the EPP are very distant from those of Le Pen. In Paris Les Républicains have decided to expel president Eric Ciotti”, he told SkyTg24.
