| Union for a Popular Movement Union pour un Mouvement Populaire |
|
|---|---|
| Leader | Nicolas Sarkozy |
| President | vacant |
| Secretary-general | Jean-François Copé |
| Founded | 17 November 2002 |
| Headquarters | 55, rue La Boétie 75384 Paris Cedex 08 |
| Ideology | Conservatism, Liberal conservatism[1] Christian democracy[1] Gaullism[1] |
| Political position | Centre-right |
| International affiliation | Centrist Democrat International, International Democrat Union |
| European affiliation | European People's Party |
| European Parliament Group | European People's Party |
| Official colours | Blue, white, red |
| National Assembly |
313 / 577
|
| Senate |
132 / 348
|
| European Parliament |
24 / 72
|
| Regional Councils |
331 / 1,880
|
| Website | |
| www.lemouvementpopulaire.fr | |
| Politics of France Political parties Elections |
|
The Union for a Popular Movement (French: Union pour un Mouvement Populaire, UMP) is a centre-right political party in France, and one of the two major contemporary political parties in the country along with the center-left Socialist Party. The UMP was founded in 2002 as a merger of several centre-right parties under President Jacques Chirac.
Its current leader Nicolas Sarkozy was elected President of France in 2007, and the party enjoys an absolute majority in the National Assembly, while the plurality in the Senate is held by the Socialists and their allies. Jean-François Copé is the party secretary-general. The UMP is a member of the European People's Party (EPP), the Centrist Democrat International (CDI) and the International Democrat Union (IDU).
Contents |
Since the 1980s, the political groups of the parliamentary right joined forces around the values of economic liberalism and the building of Europe. Their rivalries had contributed to their defeat in the 1981 and 1988 elections.
Before the 1993 legislative election, the Gaullist-conservative Rally for the Republic (RPR) and the centrist Union for French Democracy (UDF) formed an electoral alliance, the Union for France. However, at the 1995 presidential campaign they were both divided between followers of Jacques Chirac, who was eventually elected, and supporters of Edouard Balladur. After their defeat in the 1997 legislative election, RPR and UDF created the Alliance for France in order to coordinate the action of their parliamentary groups.
Before the 2002 presidential campaign, the supporters of President Jacques Chirac who were divided in three right-wing parliamentary parties founded an association named Union on the Move (Union en mouvement).[2] After Chirac's re-election, in order to fight together the legislative election, the Union for the Presidential Majority (Union pour la majorité présidentielle) was created. It was re-named "Union for a Popular Movement" some months later, establishing the UMP as a permanent organization.[2]
The UMP was founded as a merger of the Gaullist-conservative Rally for the Republic (RPR), the conservative-liberal Liberal Democracy (DL), a sizeable portion of the centrist Union for French Democracy (UDF), more precisely the UDF's Christian Democrats (such as Philippe Douste-Blazy and Jacques Barrot), the social-liberal Radical Party and the centrist Popular Party for French Democracy (both associate parties of the UDF until 2002). The UMP was thus the merger of four major French political families: Gaullism, Liberalism (also known as Republicanism in France), Christian Democracy (Popularism) and Radicalism.
As indicated by its initial name, the UMP generally supported the policies of President Chirac. However, in 2004, the party showed increasing signs of independence. The unpopularity with the electorate of Jacques Chirac and Jean-Pierre Raffarin's government led most members of the UMP to support Nicolas Sarkozy, a rival of Chirac. On the issues, the party under Sarkozy publicly disapproved of Turkey's proposed membership in the European Union, which Chirac had previously endorsed several times publicly, and generally took a more right-wing position.
At the 2004 regional elections the UMP suffered a heavy blow, winning the presidencies of only 2 out of 22 regions in metropolitan France (Alsace and Corsica) and only half of the departments (the right had previously won numerous departmental presidencies). At the 2004 European Parliament election in June the party also suffered a heavy blow, with only 16.6% of the vote, far behind the Socialist Party, and only 16 seats. This results remains the UMP's lowest point.
The first president of the UMP, Alain Juppé, a close associate of Jacques Chirac, resigned on 15 July 2004 after being convicted of political corruption in January of the same year. On 29 November 2004, Nicolas Sarkozy announced that he would take over the presidency of the UMP and resign his position as finance minister, ending months of speculation. The failure of the referendum on the European Constitution of 25 May 2005 led to the fall of the government of Jean-Pierre Raffarin and to the formation of a new cabinet, presided by another UMP politician, Dominique de Villepin.
On 22 April 2007 Nicolas Sarkozy won the plurality of votes in the first round of the 2007 presidential election. On 6 May he faced the Socialist candidate Ségolène Royal in the second round and won, garnering 53.1% of the vote. As a consequence, he resigned from the presidency of the UMP on 14 May 2007, two days before becoming President of the French Republic. François Fillon was appointed Prime Minister. On 17 June, at a legislative election, the UMP gained a majority in the National Assembly with 313 out of 577 seats, though it was less than expected.
At the 2008 municipal and cantonal elections the party suffered a big blow, losing numerous cities, such as Toulouse and Strasbourg, as well as 8 departmental presidencies to the left. Xavier Bertrand was selected as secretary-general of the party in late 2008 to replace Patrick Devedjian, who resigned to take up a cabinet position. At the 2009 European Parliament election, the party ran a common "Presidential Majority" list with the smaller Radical Party as well as New Centre and Modern Left. The UMP list won 27.9%, a remarkably good result for a governing party in off-year "mid-term" elections, and elected 29 MEPs, significantly improving on the UMP's poor result in the 2004 election – also an off-year election. However, in the 2010 regional election the UMP obtained a very poor result with only 26.0% of votes, losing Corsica and retaining only Alsace.
In a cabinet reshuffle in November 2010, which disappointed centrists within and outside the UMP, François Fillon was confirmed Prime Minister and Alain Juppé re-joined the government after three years out of politics. Among those who quit the cabinet there were Bernard Kouchner, Hervé Morin and, above all, Jean-Louis Borloo. Xavier Bertrand, who re-joined the government, was replaced as general-secretary of the UMP by Jean-François Copé.[3][4]
In May 2011, during a party congress, the Radical Party, led by Borloo, decided to leave the UMP and launch The Alliance, a new centrist coalition.[5][6][7][8]
The Christian Democratic Party, the Rally for France, The Progressives and Modern Left are associate parties of the UMP. By adhering to these parties, members also adhere to the UMP and can participate in the UMP's inner organization. The Radical Party was associated with the UMP from 2002 through 2011.
Overseas parties associated with the UMP include O Porinetia To Tatou Ai'a in French Polynesia and The Rally–UMP in New Caledonia.
The UMP's electoral base reflects that of the old Rally for the Republic and, in some cases, that of the Union for French Democracy. In the 2007 presidential election, Nicolas Sarkozy performed best in the east of France – particularly Alsace (36.2%); Provence-Alpes-Côte-d'Azur (37.0%) – the wealthy coastal department of the Alpes-Maritimes (43.6%) was his best department in France; Champagne-Ardenne (32.7%) and Rhône-Alpes (32.7%). These areas were among far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen's best regions in 2002 and are conservative on issues such as immigration. Sarkozy obviously received a lot of votes from voters who had supported the far-right in April 2002. For example, in the Alpes-Maritimes, Sarkozy performed 21.6% better than Chirac did in 2002 while Le Pen lost 12.6% in five years.[9] Sarkozy also appealed more than average to blue-collar workers in regions such as northern Meurthe-et-Moselle and the Nord-Pas-de-Calais, although most of these regions, despite his gains, remain reliably left-wing.[10] The party is also strong in every election in very wealthy suburban or coastal (and, in some cases, urban) areas such as Neuilly-sur-Seine (72.6% for Sarkozy in the first round),[11] Saint-Tropez (54.79%),[12] Cannes (48.19%)[13] or Marcq-en-Barœul (47.35%).[14] It is strong in most rural areas, like most conservative parties in the world, but this does not extend to the rural areas of the south of France, areas which are old strongholds of republican and secular ideals. However, in old "clerical" Catholic rural areas, such as parts of Lozère or Cantal, it is very strong, as was the Union for French Democracy (UDF) in its hey day.
However, the UMP does poorly in one of the UDF's best regions, Brittany, where the decline of religious practice, a moderate electorate and urbanization has hurt the UMP and also the UDF. Nicolas Sarkozy performed relatively poorly in departments with a large share of moderate Christian democratic (often centrist or centre-right) voters, such as Lozère where the Socialist candidate Ségolène Royal performed better (44.3%) than François Mitterrand had in his 1988 left-wing landslide (43.1%). While former President Jacques Chirac, the right's strongman in normally left-wing Corrèze had always done very well in Corrèze and the surrounding departments, Sarkozy did much poorly and actually lost the department in the 2007 runoff. However, in the 2009 European election, the UMP's results in those departments were superior to Sarkozy's first round result (nationally, they were 4% lower).[9]
| Election year | Candidate | # of 1st round votes | % of 1st round vote | # of 2nd round votes | % of 2nd round vote |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2002 | Jacques Chirac | 5,665,855 | 19.88% | 25,537,956 | 82.21% |
| 2007 | Nicolas Sarkozy | 11,448,663 | 31.18% | 18,983,138 | 53.06% |
| Election year | # of 1st round votes | % of 1st round vote | # of 2nd round votes | % of 2nd round vote | # of seats |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2002 | 8,408,023 | 33.30% | 10,026,669 | 47.26% | 357 |
| 2007 | 10,289,737 | 39.54% | 9,460,710 | 46.36% | 313 |
| Election year | Number of votes | % of overall vote | # of seats won |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2004 | 2,856,368 | 16.64% | 17 |
| 2009 | 4,799,908 | 27.88% | 29 |
When Nicolas Sarkozy became President of France in 2007, the office of president of the party was replaced by a collegial leadership composed of the secretary-general and the vice presidents of the party. In July 2007 Jean-Claude Gaudin, the party's acting president, explained that "Nicolas Sarkozy remains, morally, president of the UMP" and the party endorsed this statement by not choosing a successor to Sarkozy. As the post of president of the UMP is, for the moment, abolished, the secretary-general is the de facto leader of the UMP.
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||