Composition
The group is currently a bipartisan outfit. As French politics is becoming increasingly close to a two-party system, this heterogeneous group is a sort of anachronism. Moreover, differently from other political groups, RDSE is characterized by no party discipline as its members are always free to vote as they please.
Since 2008 the group, which has been predominantly Radical and centre-right in 2004–2008, has opened its doors to other parties of the left, has now a centre-left majority and is increasingly similar to other miscellaneous left-wing groups in the National Assembly.
Before joining the group of the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) in 2002, most senators of the Radical Party were members of RDSE, while a centrist senator of the Union for French Democracy (UDF) joined briefly the group from 2001 to 2002. Since 2008 five Radical senators out of six are members of the UMP group and only one is still a member of RDSE.
Read more about this topic: European Democratic And Social Rally
Famous quotes containing the word composition:
“There was not a grain of poetry in the whole composition of Lord Fawn, and poetry was what her very soul craved;Mpoetry, together with houses, champagne, jewels, and admiration.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)
“Every thing in his composition was little; and he had all the weaknesses of a little mind, without any of the virtues, or even the vices, of a great one.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“There is singularly nothing that makes a difference a difference in beginning and in the middle and in ending except that each generation has something different at which they are all looking. By this I mean so simply that anybody knows it that composition is the difference which makes each and all of them then different from other generations and this is what makes everything different otherwise they are all alike and everybody knows it because everybody says it.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)