Could
France’s conservatives really work with Le Pen? It’s no longer unthinkable.
Could
Charles de Gaulle’s political heirs really partner with a party whose founders
included Nazi sympathizers?
December
23, 2025 4:00 am CET
By
Pauline de Saint Remy and Joshua Berlinger
PARIS —
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.
Former
conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy catalyzed the political debate this
month when he said the right needed to join forces ahead of the vote to ensure
it takes the Élysée Palace.
Writing
from behind bars after being convicted in a case relating to the financing of
his 2007 campaign, Sarkozy called for the “broadest possible spirit of unity”
on the right in his recently published prison memoir. Then when asked about the
comment at a book signing, he was far less ambiguous: “We won’t succeed if
there’s no union.”
Sarkozy’s
statements rattled conservative heavyweights. Could the political heirs of
France’s most revered World War II hero, de Gaulle, really partner with a party
whose founders included Nazi sympathizers?
The
traditional answer has always been a defiant “non.” After failing to reach the
second round of the historic presidential election between Le Pen and Emmanuel
Macron in 2017, the Les Républicains scion François Fillon immediately told the
French to vote against a party long defined by violence and intolerance.
For many,
that is still the official party line. Valérie Pécresse, the party’s 2022
presidential candidate, said no to a union in multiple interviews with French
media. Jean-François Copé, a minister during Chirac’s presidency, criticized
Sarkozy for betraying de Gaulle’s principles by throwing his support behind the
National Rally’s inexperienced 30-year-old president, Jordan Bardella, because
he is doing well in the polls.
“It is an
extremely risky choice,” Copé told POLITICO.
But
behind closed doors, and increasingly in public, conservative bigwigs are
acknowledging the possibility is real. Fewer and fewer of them are opposing the
move on principle. Crucially, Sarkozy is not being ostracized by Les
Républicains as Ciotti was for the suggestion of a partnership.
Many
conservatives are more worried that their party is simply collapsing as
France’s center crumbles. Too weak to stand alone, the party’s top brass
increasingly sense they will only win powerful jobs in the next cabinet if they
tie their fortunes to the far right, which heads the polls running into the
2027 presidential race.
Xavier
Bertrand, the conservative leader of the northern region of Hauts-de-France
said Sarkozy had, with his suggestion, “hammered the final nail into the coffin
of Les Républicains.”
One
former leader of Les Républicains put it even more bluntly in remarks to
POLITICO, saying his party was “finished.”
Looking
for love
Sarkozy
used to privately mock the National Rally’s Bardella as so lacking in
experience that he “hasn’t even been president of a ping-pong club,” according
to one of the former French leader’s most loyal supporters.
So why
the change of heart?
No
conservative power players interviewed by POLITICO, many of whom were granted
anonymity to speak candidly, believed Sarkozy’s shift was motivated by his
beliefs.
Some
thought Sarkozy was seeking revenge against Macron. In his prison memoir,
Sarkozy said he was angry with him for not intervening when he was stripped of
his Légion d’honneur over his corruption conviction.
Others
believe Sarkozy is gunning for a pardon and betting that a National Rally
president will grant it, given Le Pen’s embezzlement conviction that she
continues to frame as politically motivated.
Sarkozy’s
loyal supporter previously quoted played armchair psychologist, saying the
former French leader is, despite his tough-talking persona, a sensitive soul
who responds to those who are nice to him — and Bardella publicly spoke
positively of Sarkozy in the months leading up to a meeting over the summer.
“He’s
looking for love; that’s what his whole life has been about,” a party
strategist from Les Républicains concurred.
Far
right, center stage
For
decades in France, any whiff of a partnership with the party then known as the
National Front was met with furor.
Even
small-town alliances were enough to provoke nationwide outrage. A country
haunted by its history of Nazi collaboration wasn’t going to accept candidates
working with Jean-Marie Le Pen, the National Front founder infamous for
belittling the significance of the Holocaust.
But the
elder Le Pen is dead. His daughter and political heir rebranded the party as
the National Rally and has, in little more than a decade, dragged it from the
fringes of French politics to the top of most opinion polls.
The
National Rally now has more seats in the National Assembly, France’s more
powerful lower house of parliament, than any other single political party. Its
popularity has pushed Les Républicains further to the political right, to the
point that many believe the only thing separating the two is their position on
the economy.
Even
here, Bardella’s emergence as the likely presidential candidate makes the
National Rally a more acceptable partner for Les Républicains. Mainstream
conservative business leaders long saw the far right as brutish economic
illiterates, but the polished Bardella is engaging in active outreach to the
captains of industry. Skeptics like Copé, the former Chirac minister, however,
still see Bardella as an outlier when it comes to the National Rally’s economic
platform.
Perhaps
most critically, polling shows that a majority of French voters on the right of
the political spectrum now favor a union of right-wing parties. A survey
conducted for French radio station RTL and published Dec. 10 found that
two-thirds of right-leaning respondents were in favor of an electoral pact
between the National Rally and Les Républicains.
Municipal
elections in March are shaping up to be a key test of tolerance for this kind
of right-wing union.
Already
in the city of Dijon, the center-right candidate running for mayor is under
fire for not sufficiently condemning Eric Zemmour’s anti-immigrant party
Reconquest after it endorsed him. Murmurs of an alliance in Marseille are also
growing louder given that polling shows the National Rally and Les Républicains
candidates there would likely split support on the right and clear the way for
Socialist Mayor Benoît Payan’s reelection.
The
Sarkozy supporter quoted earlier saw March as the key Rubicon for how far the
right would cooperate.
“There’s
going to be a complete shakeup at the municipals” they said.
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