Center des democrates sociaux

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The Center des démocrates sociaux ( CDS ; German: Center of Social Democrats ) was a Christian Democratic party of the political center in France, which existed from 1976 to 1995. From 1978 the CDS belonged to the civil party alliance UDF . It was a founding member of the European People's Party (EPP) and belonged to the Christian Democratic International on the international level .

Foundation and orientation

Jean Lecanuet, first chairman of the CDS (1976-82)

When it was founded in Rennes in May 1976 , the Center des démocrates sociaux collected the Christian Democrats who had not joined Gaullism after the collapse of the Mouvement républicain populaire (MRP; People's Republican Movement) in 1962 . It thus united the Center démocrate (CD) by Jean Lecanuet with the Center Démocratie et Progrès (CDP) by Jacques Duhamel . The center-oriented party was pro-European and influenced by Catholic social teaching . Like her predecessors, however, she avoided the word "Christian" in the party name due to the laïcité prevailing in France . The first chairman of the CDS was Lecanuet, the first general secretary Jacques Barrot (ex-CDP).

During its entire existence, the CDS provided the President of the French Senate: until 1992 this was Alain Poher (previously a member of the CD), then until 1998 René Monory . The strongholds of the CDS were in the Christian regions of north-west France ( Brittany , Normandy ) and Alsace . Just one month after its founding, the CDS formed the European People's Party together with Christian Democratic parties from the other EC countries .

Both parties had predecessors in the presidential election in 1974 the victorious Valéry Giscard d'Estaing supported (the CD in the first, the CDP until the second ballot) then and both were in the Cabinet Cabinet Chirac I represented. After the founding of the CDS and the cabinet reshuffle in 1976, the new Christian Democratic party was represented in the Barre I to III cabinets , first with Jean Lecanuet as Minister of State for Planning, later with Pierre Méhaignerie as Minister of Agriculture and René Monory as Minister of Industry. In 1978, the CDS was one of the founding members of the bourgeois party alliance Union pour la démocratie française (UDF), in addition to the liberal-conservative Parti républicain , the social liberal Parti radical (valoisien) and the small social democratic Mouvement démocrate socialiste de France (MDSF) Giscard d'Estaing's supporters came together. The CDS belonged to this until its dissolution in 1995. After the Socialists took over government under François Mitterrand , the CDS was in the opposition from 1981.

Tensions in the UDF

Pierre Méhaignerie took over the party chairmanship in 1982. From 1986 to 1988 the CDS was represented in the Chirac II cabinet (first cohabitation ), with Méhaignerie as minister of construction and Monory as minister of education. Within the UDF, however, the CDS was most critical of a close connection with Chirac's Gaullist RPR. In the 1988 presidential election , for example, the CDS firmly supported Raymond Barre as the UDF's own presidential candidate (who, however, failed with 16.5% in the first ballot), while the Parti républicain only supported him half-heartedly and saw Chirac as equally eligible.

After the parliamentary elections in 1988, the CDS MPs in the National Assembly temporarily separated from the UDF parliamentary group and formed their own parliamentary group called Union du center . This cooperated selectively with the government of the socialist Michel Rocard , which sought an overture (opening) for bourgeois forces. The CDS thus showed its disapproval of the shift to the right by the Parti républicain under François Léotard and temporarily assumed the role of a “hinge party” between the right and left camps. CDS member Jean-Marie Rausch was even Minister for Foreign Trade in the Rocard II cabinet ; which the party leadership refused and ultimately punished with expulsion from the party.

For the European elections in 1989 , too , the CDS took a different path than the rest of the UDF. The latter drew up a joint list with the RPR. However, since the Gaullists tended to slow down European integration while the CDS was striving for a federal Europe, the Christian Democrats, together with the former President of the European Parliament Simone Veil , drew up their own list called Le Center pour l'Europe . However, this should not be understood as a break between the CDS and the UDF, but corresponded to a strategy of mobilizing more voters for the bourgeois camp with two separate lists. Le Center pour l'Europe received 8.4% of the vote, the “official” UDF-RPR list 28.9%. This election result illustrates the balance of power within the bourgeois camp: after 1981 the “centrists” never reached the strength of the Gaullists.

Merger and Succession

François Bayrou, last chairman of the CDS (1994–95)

After the landslide victory of the bourgeoisie in the parliamentary elections in 1993, the CDS rejoined the UDF and received several important ministerial posts in the Balladur cabinet (including Méhaignerie for justice, François Bayrou for education, Edmond Alphandéry for economics). François Bayrou became the last chairman of the CDS in 1994. He pursued the transformation of the UDF from a party alliance into a single party. Initially, only the CDS and the small Parti social-démocrate (PSD), which had split off from the socialists , took part in this project . These two merged in November 1995 to form the short-lived Force démocrate party . With this, the last clearly Christian Democratic party disappeared from the political landscape of France.

Before its dissolution in 1995, the CDS had 64 members in the National Assembly and as many senators, four European parliamentarians and six ministers. It provided the President of the Regional Council ( Marcel Rudloff ) in Alsace, the President of the General Council in 17 departments and the Mayor of 10 cities with over 30,000 inhabitants (including in Toulouse : Dominique Baudis ).

It was not until 1998 that Bayrou succeeded in transforming the UDF alliance into the Nouvelle UDF party , with which the Force démocrate also disappeared again. After the UDF collapsed from 2002 to 2007, most of the former CDS politicians in the center-right collecting party UMP (e.g. René Monory, Jacques Barrot, Pierre Méhaignerie, Philippe Douste-Blazy ) found themselves in the Mouvement démocrate (led by François Bayrou), in the Nouveau Center ( Charles de Courson ) or the Alliance centriste ( Jean Arthuis ) again. The strictly Catholic-conservative wing of the former CDS around Christine Boutin formed the Forum des républicains sociaux (FRS) in 2001 , which joined the UMP as an associated party.

literature

  • Alexis Massart: The Impossible Resurrection. Christian Democracy in France. In: Steven Van Hecke, Emmanuel Gerard: Christian Democratic Parties in Europe Since the End of the Cold War. Leuven University Press, 2004, pp. 197-215, ISBN 90-5867-377-4 .

Individual evidence

  1. Michael Gehler , Marcus Gonschor, Hinnerk Meyer: Introduction. From the European Union of Christian Democrats (EUCD), European People's Party (EPP) and European Democrat Union (EDU) to the first direct elections to the European Parliament 1965–1979. In: Gehler et al.: Transnational party cooperation between the European Christian Democrats and Conservatives. de Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2018, pp. 1–64, on p. 34.
  2. Alexis Massart: The Impossible Resurrection. Christian Democracy in France. 2004, p. 200.
  3. a b Alexis Massart: The Impossible Resurrection. Christian Democracy in France. 2004, p. 201.
  4. Michael Gehler, Marcus Gonschor, Hinnerk Meyer: Introduction. From the European Union of Christian Democrats (EUCD), European People's Party (EPP) and European Democrat Union (EDU) to the first direct elections to the European Parliament 1965–1979. In: Gehler et al.: Transnational party cooperation between the European Christian Democrats and Conservatives. de Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2018, pp. 1–64, on p. 45.
  5. Joachim Schild: Politics. In: Joachim Schild, Henrik Uterwedde: France. Politics, economy, society. 2nd edition, VS Verlag, Wiesbaden 2006, p. 62.
  6. Udo Kempf: The parties of the right between unity and dissolution. In: Frankreich-Jahrbuch 1988. pp. 87–114, on p. 87.
  7. ^ Moshe Maor: Parties, Conflicts and Coalitions in Western Europe. Organizational determinants of coalition bargaining. Routledge, London / New York 1998, pp. 84-85.
  8. ^ Daniela Kallinich: The Mouvement Démocrate - A party at the center of French politics. Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2019, p. 297.
  9. ^ Paul Hainsworth: France. In: Juliet Lodge: The 1989 Election of the European Parliament. Palgrave Macmillan, New York 1990, pp. 126-144, at pp. 130-132, 141.
  10. Joachim Schild: Politics. In: Joachim Schild, Henrik Uterwedde: France. Politics, economy, society. 2nd edition, VS Verlag, Wiesbaden 2006, p. 62.
  11. Alexis Massart: The Impossible Resurrection. Christian Democracy in France. 2004, p. 206.
  12. ^ Daniela Kallinich: The Mouvement Démocrate - A party at the center of French politics. Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2019, pp. 310-313.
  13. Alexis Massart: The Impossible Resurrection. Christian Democracy in France. 2004, p. 197.
  14. ^ Daniela Kallinich: The Mouvement Démocrate - A party at the center of French politics. Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2019, p. 312.