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The head of the center-right French Republicans, Laurent Wauquiez, resigned from his post after the party had obtained its lowest score ever in the European elections.
Republicans won 8.48 percent of the vote in the May 26 elections, down from 20.41 percent in 2014. The party ranked fourth behind the far-right National Rally, the president's list. Emmanuel Macron and the Greens.
Appearing live Sunday in the TV news of the French channel TF1, Wauquiez said the European elections had been a failure.
"The victories are collective, the defeats are solitary, it's like that, I have to take my responsibilities," said Wauquiez.
He said that he had taken the decision seriously into consideration.
The pressure against Wauquiez rose after the publication of the results. The next day, Valerie Pecresse, head of Republicans in the Paris region, said that if she occupied the post of Wauquiez, she would have already resigned.
Soon after, several Republican politicians lined up to explicitly demand his resignation.
"The right must rebuild and I do not intend to interfere," Wauquiez told TF1.
Party line at fault
Wauquiez was the subject of much criticism for pushing the party in a socially conservative direction after taking office at the party's helm in December 2017, when he pledged to return it " really right.
The choice of Wauquiez as the top candidate for the European elections by François Xavier-Bellamy has generated considerable skepticism.
Bellamy, 33, is a Catholic who has been involved in Common Sense, a traditionalist group that emerged from the 2014 Manif For All, a gay anti-marriage protest.
He is also personally opposed to abortion, although he has stated that "no one thinks it is possible" for France to re-criminalize it.
During the campaign, Eurosceptics' Bellamy views appeared similar to those of the far-right National Rally of Marine Le Pen. He stated that Wauquiez had chosen him as the head of the list to create "a new phase in the history of Europe", in which "the EU is not a end in itself ", but serves the" sovereignty "of its members.
Wauquiez, 44, will now focus on his role as president of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region.
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