Union for French Democracy
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| Union pour la démocratie française | |
|---|---|
| Leader | François Bayrou |
| Founded | 1978 |
| Headquarters | UDF 133 bis, rue de l'Université
75007 Paris |
| Political Ideology | Centrism, Social liberalism, Christian Democracy |
| European Affiliation | European Democratic Party |
| International Affiliation | Alliance of American and European Democrats |
| Colours | Orange |
| The 2007 Presidential Election Candidate | François Bayrou |
| Website | www.udf.org |
| See also | Constitution of France France Politics |
The Union for French Democracy, also known by its French acronym UDF (Union pour la Démocratie Française), is a French centrist political party. It was founded in 1978 as an electoral alliance to support President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing in order to counterbalance the Gaullist preponderance over the right. This name was chosen due to the title of Giscard d'Estaing's 1976 book, French Democracy.
The founder parties were the christian-democratic Democratic and Social Centre, the conservative-liberal Republican Party, the liberal Radical Party, the centre-left Social Democratic Party and the centrist Perspectives and Realities Clubs. Now, the UDF is a single entity, due to the defection of the Republicans and the Radicals to President Jacques Chirac's UMP and the merger of the other centrist components.
Its current leader, as of 2006, is François Bayrou. The UDF has been a junior partner in the coalitions behind Prime Ministers Jean-Pierre Raffarin and Dominique de Villepin, though it has not participated in the cabinets of either, except Gilles de Robien's controversial participation as Education minister.
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[edit] History
Since its foundation, UDF has been in an uneasy alliance with the bigger right-wing party RPR and its successor UMP. Indeed, the criticism of the RPR leader Jacques Chirac contributed towards the defeat of President Giscard d'Estaing at the 1981 presidential election.
In the 1980s, RPR joined the liberal and pro-European positions of UDF. However, Chirac appeared to be the leader of right, and UDF played the supporting role in the coalition. From 1986 to 1988, UDF participated to Chirac's cabinet of the first "cohabitation".
In 1988, the former centrist Prime Minister Raymond Barre was a candidate at the presidential election. Yet, he was not supported by all the UDF personalities and he was eliminated in the first round. After the re-election of François Mitterrand, some UDF members participated as ministers in the left-wing Michel Rocard's cabinets. Others created a new parliamentary group, the Centrist Union, which voted occasionally with the Socialist Party or with the RPR. At the same time, the authority of the old right-wing leaders (Chirac, Giscard d'Estaing, Barre...) was contested by a new generation of politicians called the "renovation men".
In the 1990s, all the UDF came back in oppostion and created a new coalition with the RPR, the "Union for France". This one won comfortably the 1993 legislative election. However, the UDF was too divided to present a candidate at the 1995 presidential election. The UDF members chose between the two RPR challengers, Jacques Chirac and Edouard Balladur. The majority supported the second, but it was the former who was elected. After the right-wing defeat of the 1997 legislative election, the UDF confederation faced a major crisis, when the Republican Party, renamed Liberal Democracy, started to reassert its autonomy and finally broke ranks in 1998 with UDF.
[edit] New UDF
This led to a re-organization of UDF into the New UDF (Nouvelle UDF). Indeed it was launched as a single party with the merger of Democratic Force (born after the union of the Democratic and Social Centre and of the Social Democratic Party in 1995) and the Republican Independent and Liberal Pole (formed in 1998 by those Liberals who refused to leave UDF), in the New UDF, organized as a single party. The Radical Party and the Popular Party for French Democracy (successor of the Perspectives and Realities Clubs in 1995) remained as autonomous entities within the new party.
Many leaders of UDF left it to join the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), supporting Chirac, after it was founded in 2002, leaving the UDF leader François Bayrou somewhat isolated. While a partner in the Raffarin cabinet, the UDF sometimes criticized the policies of the French government, yet did not wish to quit the majority coalition and enter the opposition, which is mostly left-wing.
As a result, UDF, save for Gilles de Robien, quit the cabinet in the 31 March 2004 cabinet reshuffling, while still remaining in the parliamentary majority.
In 2004, the party, along with Italy's Democracy is Freedom - Daisy, was one of the founding members of the European Democratic Party, intended to be home to all those christian-democrats and centrists were disillusioned about the new couse of the European People's Party, which had welcomed the Rally for the Republic and, then, the UMP. Anyway it is also true that, after the exit of the most conservative, christian-democratic and conservative-liberal componenets in 1998 and 2002, UDF is more and more a centrist party with social-liberal tendencies.
Today, there is a split inside UDF elected officials, between those such as Gilles de Robien and Pierre-Christophe Baguet, who favor closer ties with UMP, and those such as François Bayrou that advocate independent centrist policies, with some such as Jean Dionis du Séjour trying a middle ground [1] [2]. One reason may be that UDF's elected positions are often obtained through alliances with UMP. However, the party base overwhelmingly favor independence. At the congress of Lyon, January 28-29th 2006, 91% of the members voted to retain the independence of the UDF from the UMP and transform it into an independent centrist party. This new orientation means the UDF will be a social-liberal party aiming for a balance between socialist and conservative policies.
On 16 May 2006, François Bayrou and 10 other UDF deputies voted the motion of censure brought in by the Socialist deputies for the resignation of Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin's government, following the Clearstream affair [3]. (This motion had no chance to be accepted, given that UMP has an absolute majority in the Assembly.) Following this event, France's television authority then classified Bayrou and the other UDF deputies who voted the motion in the opposition for timing purposes; however, after Bayrou protested, he was classified as neither majority nor opposition.
[edit] Ideology and political position
UDF's most marked political trait is that it is in favor of European federalism, up to the point of turning the European Union into United States of Europe. In that respect, UDF was the likely target of Chirac's Call of Cochin (1978), in which he denounced pro-European policies of "the party of the foreigners".
Until 2002, the UDF spanned a somewhat wide ideological spectrum on the center-right. An ironic characterization of UDF's membership is that it was the union of everybody on the right that was neither far-right nor a Chirac supporter. However, the UDF suffered to be not an unified party contrary to the RPR. The economic policies proposed by UDF's leaders used to range from left-wing-leaning, in favor of social justice, to strongly laissez-faire economics. Such divergences led the laissez-faire advocates of Liberal Democracy, such as Alain Madelin, to split out of UDF on 16 May 1998. This departure followed the elections of UDF politicians for the presidence of 4 regional councils with the votes of FN elects. Indeed, the Liberals refused to condemn these alliances.
Similarly, the social policies ranged from the conservatism of the likes of Christine Boutin, famously opposed to civil unions for homosexuals, to more liberal policies she was excluded from the UDF because of her strongly social conservatism and based in March 2001 the Forum of Social Republicans, now affiliated to the UMP.
[edit] Factions
- Bayrouistes, those who want UDF to be independent from UMP: Marielle De Sarnez, Jean-Louis Bourlanges, Thierry Cornillet, Gilles Artigues, Bernard Bosson, Anne-Marie Comparini, Charles de Courson, Jean-Christophe Lagarde, Jean Lassalle, Maurice Leroy, Hervé Morin, Rudy Salles, Gérard Vignoble, Nicolas Perruchot, Jean-Luc Préel, François Rochebloine, François Sauvadet
- Society in Movement, those who want close ties with UMP: Gilles de Robien, Olivier Jardé, Jean-Pierre Abelin, Pierre-Christophe Baguet, Jean Dionis du Séjour, Francis Hillmeyer, Michel Hunault, Stéphane Demilly, Yvan Lachaud, André Santini, Francis Vercamer, Claude Leteurtre, Rodolphe Thomas
[edit] Presidents
- Jean Lecanuet (1978-1988)
- Valéry Giscard d'Estaing (1988-1996)
- François Léotard (1996-1998)
- François Bayrou (1998-)
