The Rally for France (french: Rassemblement pour la France (RPF); also briefly known in 2003 as Rally for France and European Independence or ) was a

political party A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular country's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific ideological or p ...

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...

of the

right Rights are legal, social, or ethical principles of freedom or entitlement; that is, rights are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed of people or owed to people according to some legal system, social convention, or ethical ...

. It was founded in 1999 by the

Gaullist Gaullism (french: link=no, Gaullisme) is a French political stance based on the thought and action of World War II French Resistance leader Charles de Gaulle, who would become the founding President of the Fifth French Republic. De Gaulle with ...

and former Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, then allied with

Philippe de Villiers Philippe Marie Jean Joseph Le Jolis de Villiers de Saintignon, known as Philippe de Villiers (; born 25 March 1949), is a French entrepreneur, politician and novelist.Main Website Retrieved 4 March 2009. He is the founder of the Puy du Fou them ...

(ex- UDF). The RPF aimed to fight against globalisation and European federalism. The party was opposed to further European integration. The new party enjoyed early electoral success when it placed second in the 1999 European Parliament election in France, scoring 13 percent of the vote and winning 13 seats. This placed it behind the

Socialist Party Socialist Party is the name of many different political parties around the world. All of these parties claim to uphold some form of socialism, though they may have very different interpretations of what "socialism" means. Statistically, most of t ...

but ahead of the established centre-right parties, the

Rally for the Republic- DL list and the UDF. However Philippe de Villiers' departure in late 2000, in order to refound his

Movement for France The Movement for France (french: Mouvement pour la France, MPF; ) was a conservative, soft Eurosceptic and Gaullist French political party, founded on 20 November 1994, with a marked regional stronghold in the Vendée. It was led by Philippe de ...

, severely damaged the party and Pasqua failed to run in the 2002 Presidential elections. The RPF has since suffered several setbacks in various elections and has failed to regain its 1999-2000 momentum, and has been eclipsed by the MPF as a party of the Eurosceptic right in France. The party won two seats in the 2002 National Assembly election, through an alliance with the UMP but lost all its MEPs in the 2004 European election. Charles Pasqua was elected Senator for the Hauts-de-Seine in the 2004 French Senate election. He sat in the UMP group. The RPF remained an associate party of the main centre-right party, the UMP.

See also