Mouvement pour la France
The Mouvement pour la France ( MPF ; German "Movement for France") was a party in France with a national-conservative , EU-skeptical and sovereignist orientation that existed from 1994 to 2018. The MPF was chaired by Philippe de Villiers throughout its existence .
The MPF was particularly successful in the European elections . His MPs were representatives of traditionally conservative regions, especially in western France. The stronghold of the party was the conservative Vendée department on the Atlantic coast, where Philippe de Villiers was President of the General Council from 1988 to 2010 . In the French party spectrum, the MPF stood to the right of the center-right collecting party UMP, founded in 2002, or Les Républicains from 2015 . However, it expressly distanced itself from the Front National and was not counted on the extreme right. In national elections the party remained independent of the UMP, but for local elections it formed alliances with this and other parties of the center-right spectrum.
history
The forerunner was the movement Combats pour les Valeurs (“Fight for Values”) initiated in 1991 by Catholic-Conservative and EU-skeptical politicians of the bourgeois parties UDF and RPR - Philippe de Villiers , Christine Boutin and Bernard Debré - and from 1993 Combat pour la France ("Fight for France"). This opposed the EU Treaty of Maastricht , ratified in 1992 , which was supported by the leadership of the UDF and RPR. In the European elections in June 1994 , the EU-skeptical Majorité pour l'Autre Europe (“Majority for another Europe”) led by de Villiers (who was still a member of the UDF at the time) entered the European Parliament with 13 members. Among them were de Villiers, Charles de Gaulle junior and the British-French banker James Goldsmith . They joined the Group of Europe of Nations (coordination group) or its successor, the Group of Independents for Europe of Nations .
On November 20, 1994, the Mouvement pour la France was founded as a political party. Its chairman Philippe de Villiers ran for the 1995 presidential election and came in seventh place with 4.7% of the vote. After the Senate election in 1995, the MPF had two senators. For the French parliamentary elections in 1997 , the MPF formed an alliance with the Center national des indépendants et paysans (CNIP) under the name La Droite Indépendante ("The Independent Right"). Their candidates won two constituencies in the Vendée. In the 1998 regional elections, 14 MPF members entered the regional councils of eight regions, five of them in the Pays de la Loire in western France .
In the 1999 European elections , the MPF ran together with the Rassemblement pour la France (RPF). The alliance was the second strongest force with 13.1% and achieved a total of 13 mandates. They joined the Union for Europe of the Nations (UEN) group. The alliance with the RPF broke up at the end of 2000, and the five MPF members of the European Parliament became non-attached. In the 2004 European elections , the MPF independently won 7.6% of the vote and three seats. It became part of the Independence / Democracy parliamentary group and, together with the League of Polish Families and the Italian Lega Nord , initiated the European party Alliance of Independent Democrats in Europe (AIDE) in 2005 , which dissolved at the end of 2008.
In the 2004 Senate election, the number of MPF senators increased to three. In the 2007 presidential election , de Villiers ran again, but this time only received 2.2% of the vote. In 2009, the members of the MPF took part in the founding of the Europe-wide Libertas party and stood on its list for the 2009 European elections . The list was able to win a seat for de Villiers. He joined the Europe of Freedom and Democracy Group (EVS). In the summer of 2009 the MPF joined the Comité de liaison de la majorité présidentielle , ie the alliance of the center-right parties allied with the UMP of President Nicolas Sarkozy . For the regional elections, MPF candidates ran on the joint center-right lists of the government camp and received a total of 10 seats in six regional councils.
In 2011, the MPF, together with Lega Nord, Danish People's Party , “True Finns” and other national parties, participated in the founding of the European party Movement for a Europe of Freedom and Democracy (MELD), which existed until 2015. In the 2012 French general election , only one MPF MP was re-elected. The MPF did not run for the 2014 European elections . The party was dissolved in June 2018.
Individual evidence
- ^ A b c d e Laurent de Boissieu: Mouvement pour la France (MPF). In: France-politique.fr , 4th June 2019.
- ^ Mouvement pour la France , Projet Arcadie.