The four MEPs who broke away from Eric Zemmour’s Reconquête party will build a “French Conservative” political party, an internal letter sent to representatives of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group has said.
In the letter dated June 14 and seen by Brussels Signal, former Reconquête MEP Nicolas Bay said he wanted to inform his colleagues regarding the state of the split.
“I know that the situation in France is a little chaotic at the moment,” he wrote.
Bay confirmed previous reporting that he and his colleagues were both out of Reconquête and had no plans on rejoining Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN).
Instead, the MEPs want to build a new party with the same values as the ECR, which Bay joined on behalf of Reconquête earlier this year.
“We remain united in defending our values, the same values which made me request the membership to our ECR group. We will not be joining Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National, with whom we can work, but we want to keep our differences,” he said.
“We want to build a reasonable, demanding, sound French Conservative party, committed to defend national identities and all freedoms, including economic ones, dedicated to the protection of our civilisational and Christian heritage, with no concessions to the Left, which wants to destroy our traditions, or to the European Union, which wants to enslave our nations.”
The split of France’s Reconquête party is now “complete”, insiders claimed in a new internal memo.https://t.co/CLIxw5c6ms
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) June 14, 2024
Bay also repeated claims that Zemmour was to blame for the Reconquête split as well as accusations that the leader’s faction had sabotaged Marion Maréchal’s EU election campaign.
The MEP argued that what he called Zemmour’s “provocative, outrageous and counterproductive” political “drift” had almost torpedoed a planned right-wing electoral pact between RN, the Republicans (LR) and Maréchal’s now-politically homeless Conservative faction.
In addition, he took a a shot at the Republicans’ (LR) François-Xavier Bellamy for what he said was his role in the split currently plaguing the centre-right party.
Bay accused Bellamy of having “abandoned” LR leader Eric Ciotti over his push to build the right-wing electoral alliance with the aim of “defeating Emmanuel Macron”.
The MEP signed off by telling his fellow ECR representative that he had “much more to say” on the current situation, but that he did not want to take up too much of their time.
“I remain, as always, at your disposal to talk if you would like more details on our approach or on the political situation in France in general,” he said.
EXC: Marion Maréchal is to “build her own party” after the implosion of Reconquête in the run-up to France’s snap elections. https://t.co/hgGdDDqT61
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) June 13, 2024
