Centrism in France

Centrism in France (French: Centrisme politique) has played a major role in French politics over many decades. This page presents the parties, political movements and personalities linked to Centrism in France according to their political traditions or their background. The different families of centrism are presented in the different sections.

History
The moderates, democrats and Christian democrats constitute the main political family of the center in France, they come from the Orleanist and liberal traditions of the French right, the moderates, democrats and Christian democrats were mainly structured into political parties after the Liberation of France. The Popular Republican Movement (MRP), under the French Fourth Republic, then the Union for French Democracy (UDF), under the French Fifth Republic constituted the two major political forces which brought the ideologies together. The Fifth Republic and the election by direct universal suffrage of the President of the Republic was established in 1962 would make the electoral success of centrist parties more difficult.

The MRP, was founded as a party in 1944 by former resistance fighters, quickly became one of the three major parties (with the PCF and the SFIO) which dominated the national political life of the Fourth Republic. The MRP was the second largest party in the Constituent Assembly of 1945 and to the National Assembly elected in November 1946. The MRP was the largest party during the election of the second Constituent Assembly in June 1946 and was part of the two main coalitions of the Fourth Republic : Tripartisme (1946–47) and the Third Force (1947–51). The MRP then became a central political force of the new regime and counted among its ranks three Prime Ministers: Robert Schuman, Georges Bidault et Pierre Pflimlin. The Christian Democrats participated in all the governments of the Fourth Republic and, despite the political instability of their party, their ministers remained in place for many years with Schuman at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1948-1953), Jean-Marie Louvel at the Ministry of Industry and Commerce (1950-1954). However, the MRP fell back electorally: its vote share was halved during the legislative elections of 1951 and 1956. After the founding of the RPF, the MRP no longer appeared as the party of loyalty to Charles de Gaulle, while the traditional moderate right regrouped around the National Centre of Independents and Peasants (CNI). The MRP supported the return of De Gaulle and the establishment of the Fifth Republic and participated in the beginning of his presidency but disagreements over European politics pushed the MPR into opposition before dissolving in 1965. Jean Lecanuet was inspired to found a new party, the Democratic Centre. The Union for French democracy (UDF) was established in 1978 as a union between a number of centrist parties including the Democratic Centre (from the MRP), Republican Party (formerly FNRI) and the Radical Party. Other Centrist factions like the Social Democratic Party (PSD) and Democratic Convention (PSD) succeeded in establishing itself as a political force of government thanks to the legitimacy of its founder, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing who was elected President of France in 1974 the first time that the role hadn't been held by a Gaullist or a left winger. However, after the failure of Giscard to be re-elected in the 1981 presidential election the UDF could only maintain its political influence by allying with right-wing forces, disputing the neo-Gaullist Rally for the Republic for leadership over the conservative electorate. Despite this conflict part of the UDF, mainly members of the Centre of Social Democrats (formerly the Democratic Centre of Jean Lecanuet) nevertheless took part in the government of openness led by Michel Rocard from 1988 to 1991 forming a distinct group (Union of the Centre (France)) of the UDF in the National Assembly. From the mid-1990s onwards, the UDF experienced several splits, seeing the Liberals leave it in 1998 (including the Republican Party which later became Liberal Democracy), then a majority of its executives and many activists in favour of the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) in 2002 (including the Radical Party). At the same time, the "New-UDF" was created through the merging of most of the remaining components apart from the PPDF. In 2007, François Bayrou, president of the UDF, reached 18.57% of the votes in the first round of the presidential election. The UDF finally disappeared through its integration into the new party founded by François Bayrou, the Democratic Movement (MoDem), which adopted a position independent of the right and left forces. Party members that refused to abandon the alliance with the right created The Centrists at the same time. In June 2008, Jean Arthuis, who left the MoDem, created a national association, the Centrist Alliance,which brought together elected officials and activists attached to the political heritage of the UDF.

In 2011, Jean-Louis Borloo president of the Radical Party, created the Republican, Ecologist and Social Alliance (ARES) which aimed to bring together the centrist groups that were members of Nicolas Sarkozy's presidential majority, with the prospect of a common candidacy in the 2012 presidential election. In November 2011, Jean-Louis Borloo decided not to run in the election as a candidate. The members of ARES mainly supported the candidacy of Nicolas Sarkozy after Hervé Morin also did not stand. In May 2012 Jean-Louis Borloo created the Union of Democrats and Independents (UDI) following the failure of Nicolas Sarkozy to win re-election. He relaunched his intention to bring together center-right political groups under one movement. Under its influence, Members of Parliament who were members of The Centrists, the Radical Party, and the Centrist Alliance (formerly Rassembler les centrists), and various right and center right (including Caledonia Together and the CNIP) form the Union group democrats and independents in the National Assembly, the UDI became a political party in September 2012 joined by the Democratic European Force (FED) under the leadership of Jean-Christophe Lagarde, which was founded by several members of the New Centre who opposed Hervé Morin's leadership.

In March 2017, the Centrist Alliance provided its support to Emmanuel Macron's En Marche campaign in the 2017 French presidential election, which led to its exclusion from the UDI as the party and its affiliates supported the candidacy of François Fillon (after having supported Alain Juppé during the primary). After the 2017 French legislative election, two other founding parties left the UDI: the Radical Party, which initiated a process of reunification with the left radicals which led to the founding of the Radical Movement in December 2017. This was followed by Hervé's movement The Centrists.

Following the presidential election and legislative elections, radical centrism was considered France's dominant political ideology.

French centrist personalities

 * Raymond Barre
 * Simone Veil
 * Pierre Méhaignerie
 * Philippe Douste-Blazy
 * André Santini
 * Jean-Pierre Raffarin
 * Hervé de Charette
 * Gilles de Robien
 * Jean-Marie Cavada
 * François Sauvadet
 * Michel Mercier
 * Marielle de Sarnez

Liberals
Liberalism in France can be considered a right-wing ideology but many centrist movements have claimed to be liberal or have had liberal wings like the UDF.

History
Liberalism has never been a very popular political movement in France since the 20th century. This was partly due to the fact that liberals took quite a long time to organize themselves in the aftermath of the Second World War

Even while liberalism was present within the National Centre of Independents and Peasants (CNIP), it wasn't until the personalities of Antoine Pinay and Valéry Giscard d'Estaing to gain political stature for the liberals to find national leaders in France. During the 1960s, the CNIP experienced a split led by Valéry Giscard d'Estaing bringing together supporters of support for Charles de Gaulle within the Independent Republicans. This parliamentary group would quickly transform into a Giscardian political party which embodied the liberal movement until the creation of the UMP. However, this party would never be able to win the elections (legislative or presidential) alone. Suffering from opposition from the Gaullists after the resignation of Jacques Chirac from his post as Prime Minister in 1976, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing quickly allied himself with the centrist parties, resulting from the breakup of the MRP, which it brought together during the 1978 French legislative election within of the UDF whose two main components become the Republican Party (PR - heir to the Independent Republicans) and the Centre of Social Democrats (CDS heir to the MPR). The PR would become a strong political force and be an important component of all right-wing majorities until 1997, but its liberal identity became somewhat blurred due to the essentially democratic image of the UDF. In 1997, it changed its name to Liberal Democracy after Alain Madelin became its president. More than symbolic, this new name embodies a change in attitude among liberals who assume for the first time the ideological identity of their political family. In 1998, the UDF broke up and DL became independent, and became an ally of the RPR with which it merged into the UMP in 2002. This anchored the liberals definitively on the right wing, a position widely accepted by most of them since the 1980s-1990s. However, other political parties continue to want to structure an independent liberal political family, beyond the right-left divide, such as Liberal Alternative or the Liberal Democratic Party (former member of the UDI). In 2017, some of the members of The Republicans (successor party to the UMP), considered the party line as too right-wing and created the Agir party stating to defend “liberal, social, European, humanist and reformist” ideas. Along the same lines, the Horizons party was created in 2021.

French Liberals

 * Antoine Pinay
 * Patrick Devedjian
 * Virginie Calmels
 * Valéry Giscard d'Estaing
 * François Léotard
 * Patrick Devedjian
 * Alain Madelin

History
Radicalism is one of the oldest political families that has been structured in France. As supporters of a secular and social republic, they come from the extreme left of the 19th century.

The Radical Party was founded in 1901, even before the law authorizing the creation of associations and political parties existeed. The Republican Party containing radical and radical-socialists gradually evolved towards a central positioning on the political scene. This is most certainly due to its role as a pivotal party under the French Third Republic, and to the structuring of two competing families on the left: the socialists and the communists. Under the French Fifth Republic, the party lost most of its electoral influence and brought together politicians attached to radical values, but for some advocating an alliance with other left-wing forces and for others who wanted an alliance with centrists from the MRP and the Independent Republicans of Giscard d'Estaing.

Finally, in 1971, the party experienced a split, seeing the creation by the minority tendency of the Radical Party of the Left. In 1978, the so-called “Valoisien” Radical Party joined the Union for French Democracy within which it nevertheless retained a strong degree of autonomy. Finally, in 2002, the party left the UDF to join forces with the UMP, which it left in 2011 when its president, Jean-Louis Borloo, formed the Republican, Ecologist and Social Alliance (ARES) which aims to bring together the centrist groups that are members of Nicolas Sarkozy's presidential majority, with the prospect of a joint candidacy for the 2012 presidential election. Finally Jean-Louis Borloo formed the Union of Democrats and Independents (UDI) in 2012 with the same ambition of bringing together the centrists. The MRG, which became the Radical Left Party, concluded from its creation a lasting programmatic, electoral and financial alliance with the Socialist Party while retaining its legal independence.

List of radical parties and movements
In bold, parties still active.

List of radical politicians

 * Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber
 * Maurice Faure
 * Robert Fabre
 * Jean Médecin
 * Jean-Louis Borloo
 * Jean-Michel Baylet
 * Roger-Gérard Schwartzenberg
 * François Huwart
 * André Rossinot
 * François Loos
 * Serge Lepeltier
 * Rama Yade
 * Yves Jégo
 * Annick Girardin

History
Beyond the radicals, the center-left brings together in France two major currents from moderate socialism: the social democrats and the social liberals.

Social democrats
French social democracy was mainly expressed within the Socialist Party, of which several members claimed to be such during the 2000s. However, they did not claim a centrist position on the political spectrum, but on the contrary an anchoring on the left which remained very majority and embodied in particular by politicians like Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Christian socialists, who were first structured in the trade union sector (French Confederation of Christian Workers) and youth organizations (Jeunesse Étudiante Chrétienne), some participated in the MRP, then in the Socialist Party, like Jacques Delors. Many Protestant socialist figures (or those from Protestant families), such as Michel Rocard, embodied within the “Deuxième gauche” a socialism closer to the forces of the center than to the communist left. In 2020, Territoires of Progress was created, a party claiming to be social democratic and part of Emmanuel Macron's presidential majority.

Social liberals
A more recent trend, the social liberals come from the social democratic tardition. They gradually structured themselves within the Socialist Party (while remaining an extremely minority) claiming a political line inspired by social democracy and the New Labour project embodied by British prime Minister Tony Blair. Gérard Collomb was a figure of this movement in France. Some took the chance and backed liberal candidate Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007 like Jean-Marie Bockel or Éric Besson. Today, social liberalism is mainly expressed within Renaissance (formerly En Marche) although the movement does not claim to be one and prefers to use the term progressive. As the party founded by Emmanuel Macron, a former minister of the socialist government under François Hollande he has support from figures from the center, right and left.

Progressives
Even more than the homonymous party of Éric Besson, Renaissance claims a progressive identity which is focused on ecology, social liberalism and Pro-Europeanism which goes beyond any economic considerations. The “progressive” terminology does not refer to this movement, unlike social-liberalism. Progressivism is also defended in France by parties or personalities with various economic positions, ranging from the former liberal minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet to the social-democratic movement Place publique.

List of social democrats, social liberals and progressives movements
In bold, parties still active.

Other personalities

 * Pierre Mendès France
 * Jacques Delors
 * Michel Rocard
 * Olivier Stirn
 * Dominique Strauss-Kahn
 * Gérard Collomb
 * Manuel Valls
 * Pascal Lamy
 * Bernard Kouchner
 * Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet
 * Emmanuel Macron
 * Manuel Valls

History
Bonapartism, as identified by René Rémond, was one of the three rights existing in France (Les Droites en France, 1954) and of which Gaullism is a direct heir, has also largely inspired the center and the center-left, by its transpartisan aspect and its social doctrine. A part of the social Gaullists and the left Gaullists thus embody, under the French Fifth Republic, the centrist and center-left branch of French Caesarism.

Unlike the social Gaullists, who have always been members of the right-wing Gaullist parties, the left-wing Gaullists were structured independently, notably within the UDT, until the 1980s. From this turning point, they rallied either to the neo-Gaullism of the RPR, or to the traditional left by rapprochement with the PS during the alternation of 1981, joining the presidential majority without however organizing themselves in a common structure.

The Republican Pole of Jean-Pierre Chevènement can nevertheless be considered as a partisan survival of left-wing Gaullism, at the turn of the 2000s. It was succeeded, after the failure of its founder in the 2002 presidential election, by the Deuxième gauche, which still brings together a part of the Republicans, Gaullists and left-wing sovereigntists but whose political audience is more confidential.

Subsequently, the Solidarity Republic party, founded by former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin in 2010, wants to embody a social Gaullism anchored to the center-right.

List of movements
In bold, parties still active.

History
From the beginnings of environmental movements, political ecology has been divided into two currents of thought, the first claiming to be left-wing, the second claiming to be independent of the right/left divide or even like centrist movements: this is ecology centrist. The main French environmentalist political party, the Greens, initially adhered to this second school of thought until 1994 when they chose to break with "neither right nor left" to ally themselves with the Socialist Party and then to enter the government of Plural left in 1997. This change of political line caused the departure of Antoine Waechter in 1994 who left to found the Independent Ecological Movement: it was then the beginning of the division between the centrist ecologists and the left ecologists who would impose themselves with The Greens then with The Ecologists as the first political ecological force in France.

In 2015, a new split tore the ecologists of EELV between supporters of a return to the government of Manuel Valls, they were rather center-left ecologists led by Jean-Vincent Placé and François de Rugy, and ecologists favorable to alliances electoral with the Left Front, they are rather left-wing or even radical left ecologists, led by Cécile Duflot.

Jean-Vincent Placé and François de Rugy then founded the Ecologist Party, which allied itself with the Socialist Party and returned to the presidential majority. The movement therefore moved towards La République en Marche and joined the new presidential majority formed in 2017.

Ecologist politicians

 * Barbara Pompili
 * François de Rugy
 * Jean-Luc Bennahmias
 * Nicolas Hulot

Other centrist groups
It is also possible to place at the centre of the political spectrum certain “thematic” movements and parties such as the Federalist Party or regionalist-nationalist parties such as the Breton Party.

In the royalist movement, the Democratic Rally (RD) is a small centrist group bringing together the center left and the center right as well as the royalist Gaullists.