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Politico (23 December 2025)

Pauline de Saint Remy and Joshua Berlinger

France’s conservatives last year considered the idea of an alliance with Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally so toxic that when then-party leader Eric Ciotti suggested it, the furious backlash forced him to physically barricade himself in his office to pretend he was still in his job. 

Ciotti and his allies ultimately had to splinter off from Les Républicains — the storied party of Charles de Gaulle and Jacques Chirac — to form their own faction allied to the National Rally.

But fast forward 18 months from Ciotti’s farcical performance in summer 2024, and a union spanning the entirety of the French political right — including the National Rally — is no longer implausible ahead of the 2027 presidential election. The idea even has a widely discussed name: l’union des droites, the union on the right.

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