It came from the merger of the Christian-democratic and centrist Popular Republican Movement (MRP) and the liberal and conservative National Center of Independents and Peasants (CNIP).

[4] Its goal was to incarnate a third way between the left-wing opposition (which was Marxist and anticlerical) and the Gaullist coalition (accused of being Eurosceptic, nationalist and authoritarian).

At the ensuing 1969 presidential election Democratic Centre supported the candidacy of Alain Poher, chairman of the Senate.

[4][5] At the beginning of the 1970s there were therefore two centrist parties: the CDP, a component of the presidential majority, and the Democratic Centre, which remained in opposition.

The Democratic Centre allied with the centrist Radical Party of Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber to form the Reform Movement in 1972,[4] Nevertheless, due to the ballot system in the legislative election (the Two-round system), it concluded electoral agreements with the presidential majority in a number of constituencies in the 1973 legislative election.