 The CDS was one of the co-founding parties of the European People's Party, and later merged into the Democratic Force.It was founded on 23 May 1976 by the merger of the Democratic Centre, Centre, Democracy and Progress, and former members of the Popular Republican Movement (MRP), the National Centre of Independents and Peasants (CNIP), and the Democratic and Socialist Union of the Resistance (UDSR).On 1 February 1978, the CDS was a founding member of the Union for French Democracy (UDF), alongside the Republican Party of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and the Radical Party of Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber.