The Rassemblement pour la République or RPR (Rally for the Republic in English) was a French political party. Originating from the UDR, it was founded by Jacques Chirac in 1976 and posed as the heir of Gaullism. On September 21, 2002, the RPR was merged into the Union pour la Majorité Présidentielle.
By large, the RPR used to be Chirac's electoral machine, even though a sizeable part of its members supported other presidential contender Édouard Balladur in 1995. Some Gaullists such as Charles Pasqua, a founding member of RPR, left the party, denouncing policies that they deemed too much in favor of the power of the European Union, at odds with the Gaullist doctrine of national independence.
