Paris (AFP)

UDI president Jean-Christophe Lagarde lamented on Saturday that the right has "partly lost its republican compass" to the far right, the hesitation of some threatening to "condemn their own political family".

"Today nothing can unite Eric Ciotti and Renaud Muselier, Nadine Morano and Jean Rottner, François-Xavier Bellamy and Michel Barnier. Why? This political family has given up making the difference between what is the extreme right and the values ​​of the republican right ", inherited from General de Gaulle, Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy, he said at a UDI congress.

Yet "everything in its history has opposed it to the extreme right," added Mr. Lagarde, reelected at the head of the party with 96.4% of the vote at this congress.

"When, during the presidential election, some refused to choose between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, they lost the thread of their own history", and these hesitations show that "there is something lost in this family political ", added Mr. Lagarde, denouncing a" loss of reference points, of republican compass, of values ​​so serious that they are in the process of condemning their own political family ".

Deploring not to be heard by Emmanuel Macron, the centrists of the UDI had initiated a rapprochement with The Republicans during their universities last September.

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"Among the Macronists there has never been a compass" and the left "has totally lost its universalist compass", added Mr. Lagarde for whom "we are the only ones to have retained a course, a history and values" .

Defending at the approach of 2022 a project of "balance" on European construction, decentralization and environmental protection to "get out of the sham debates", he affirmed that the UDI would stop "in the autumn" his position for the presidential election.

"We will all be together" at the meeting of 2022, said Mr. Lagarde, given between 1 and 2% in the polls, ensuring that "from next summer, 250 legislative candidates will be selected".

Guest of this congress, the former European negotiator for Brexit Michel Barnier (LR) estimated that "our country needs a strong Republican right of a strong center which works together", and repeated his warning for 2022: " I recommend to pay attention to events which seem improbable, and which can occur, in particular the election of Marine Le Pen ".

© 2021 AFP