(Redirected from National Center of Independents and Peasants)The 'National Center of Independents and Peasants' (''Centre National des Indépendants et Paysans'', CNIP) is a
liberal-conservative and
conservative-liberal political party in
France, founded in 1951 by the merge of the
National Centre of Independents (the heir of the French Republican conservative-liberal tradition, so that many party members came from the
Democratic Republican Alliance) with the
Peasant Party and the
Republican Party of Liberty.
It participated to the
Third Force coalition, and took a major part at the beginning of the 1950s. In this,
Antoine Pinay, its most popular figure, was
Prime Minister in 1952, followed by
Joseph Laniel in 1953-1954. It succeded to elect
René Coty as
President of France in 1953. It declined after the
Dien Bien Phu military disaster in
Indochina in 1954.
In 1958, it supported
de Gaulle's come back and approved the constitution of the
Fifth Republic. Between 1958 and 1962 CNIP was the second largest political party and
Antoine Pinay was Economy Minister until 1960. However, the party criticized the euro-scepticism of de Gaulle and the "presidentialisation". In 1962, it returned in opposition but the CNIP ministers, such
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, refused to leave the cabinet. They founded the
Independent Republicans.
The party was defeated in the general election of November 1962 after 109 of its deputies voted against
Georges Pompidou's government in a
confidence vote on
October 51962.
In 1965, he merged with the Christian-democratic
Popular Republican Movement to form the
Democratic Centre. It re-became independent after 1968, but it is a marginal conservative group (sometimes with far right tendencies, having gained members from the ''
Parti des forces nouvelles''), now associate party of the
Union for a Popular Movement.
External links
★
Official website