Fourth Republic The Centre National des Indépendants was founded in January 1949 with the aim of uniting centre-right and right-wing parliamentarians, dispersed between a plethora of parties such as the
Republican Party of Liberty and other
modérés (moderates). It adopted its current name in 1951 after it merged with a split from
Paul Antier's small
Peasant Party (the successor of the pre-war
French Agrarian and Peasant Party - a party that had a
corporatist tradition unlike other classically liberal elements in the party). As the leading right-wing force during the
Fourth Republic, it won around 14% of the vote in
1951 and
1956 and participated in
Third Force government coalitions, taking a major role in governments at the beginning of the 1950s.
Antoine Pinay, its most popular figure, was
Prime Minister in 1952, followed by
Joseph Laniel from 1953 to 1954.
René Coty, a CNIP parliamentarian, was elected
President of France in 1953. The party's power declined after the
Dien Bien Phu military disaster in
Indochina in 1954, and it remained in opposition for most of the last two years of the Fourth Republic after the 1956 elections. During the Cold War the CNIP was a strongly anti-communist party, strongly supported and financed by
employers, colonial and agricultural lobbies. While the CNIP was more
economically liberal than the Christian democratic
Popular Republican Movement (MRP), like the MRP it supported
European integration and
NATO. It was a militant defender of
French Algeria throughout the
Algerian War.
Fifth Republic In 1958, it supported
Charles de Gaulle's comeback and approved the constitution of the
Fifth Republic. Having won over 130 seats in the
1958 election, it was a member of the
Gaullist governing coalition until 1962.
Antoine Pinay, the Minister of the Economy until 1960, spearheaded a successful monetary reform in 1959 (the introduction of the
nouveau franc). However, the party quickly clashed with the Gaullists. It opposed Charles de Gaulle's policy of
self-determination in Algeria, disliked his interventionist economic policies, criticized the euroscepticism of De Gaulle and opposed the growing "presidentialisation" of the regime. On October 5, 1962, 107 CNIP deputies
voted no-confidence in
Georges Pompidou's government, opposing de Gaulle's
constitutional reform on the election of the president by universal suffrage. However, the CNIP cabinet ministers, led by future president
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, continued to support de Gaulle. With the support of 24 deputies, they founded their own party, the
Independent Republicans (RI). Severely weakened by the split and its opposition to the October 1962 referendum, it suffered a major defeat in the
1962, left with only a handful of seats. It allied itself with the
Popular Republican Movement (MRP) to form the
Democratic Centre, later known as
Progress and Modern Democracy, in which the CNIP was only a small component. The party has never regained its former strength and became a marginal conservative group. In the 1980s, it attempted to serve as a 'bridge' between the parliamentary right (
RPR and
UDF) and the far-right (
FN). Although these negotiations were unsuccessful, they provoked a major feud with the party's former leader,
Annick du Roscoät, who wanted the party to keep its conservative orientation while Bourdouleix has sought to reposition the CNIP towards the centre-right. In the
2009 European Parliament election, the party ran autonomous lists in three constituencies. However, the party was only able to print ballots in
Guyane (2.65%) and
Île-de-France (0.42%). In the
2010 regional elections, the CNIP supported some lists led by
Nicolas Dupont-Aignan's
Arise the Republic while it backed the UMP or dissident right-wing lists in other regions. On September 19, 2012, Bourdouleix - the party's only remaining deputy - announced that the CNIP was joining Borloo's centre-right
Union of Democrats and Independents (UDI). He had already joined the UDI group in the National Assembly in June 2012. But on 10 September, the CNIP was expelled from the UDI after Gilles Bourdouleix had declared the "Maybe Hitler hadn't killed enough
Romas". CNIP joined the
Les Amoureux de la France coalition led by Nicolas Dupont-Aignan during the
2019 European Parliament election and was part of the group of parties supporting
Eric Zemmour's political party,
Reconquête during the
2022 presidential election. ==Electoral results==