France’s main left parties are preparing to contest legislative elections united on a single ticket, in an attempt to prevent re-elected President Emmanuel Macron from winning an absolute majority in the National Assembly, as he did in his first election five years ago.
After intense negotiations in recent days, the radical left France Insubmissa party announced on Wednesday (4) an agreement with the center-left Socialist Party (PS), after also attracting the communists and the greens this week. Together, the acronyms totaled 30% of the votes in the first round.
“We want to elect deputies to prevent Macron from continuing his unjust and brutal policy and to defeat the extreme right,” says an excerpt from the statement released by the disobedient and socialists. The decision still needs to be approved internally by the Socialist Party, which is due to meet on Thursday.
The left slate was christened the New Ecological and Social Popular Union, and the campaign will be officially launched next Saturday (7), the same day of the inauguration ceremony of Macron’s second term.
The legislative election takes place in two rounds, on June 12 and 19. 577 seats are up for grabs, each representing an electoral district in France. The absolute majority in the assembly is achieved with 289 seats, a number that allows a government to pass its proposals without depending on other political forces. In 2017, Macron’s newly created party elected 308 parliamentarians.
The negotiations for the left-wing alliance were led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s team, third in the first round, with 21.95%, less than two percentage points behind the ultra-right Marine Le Pen, who was defeated in the second round. The intention to join forces against Macron was announced by Mélenchon a few minutes after the president’s re-election was confirmed, on the night of April 24. At the time, he called the legislative election a “third round” and asked for votes for the candidates of Insubmissive France so that, with a majority of seats, he could become prime minister.
In the following days, partisan talks intensified, and the first agreements were reached on the night of last Sunday, after the May 1 demonstrations, which registered cries against Macron’s flags, such as the proposal to increase the minimum retirement age of 62 to 65 years.
The alliance between the four parties, considered uncertain until a few days ago, is meeting resistance especially among the Socialists, France’s most traditional leftist acronym, which elected two former presidents, François Mitterrand and François Hollande, but had a disastrous performance in this campaign. .
Among the points of disagreement between the groups is the figure of Mélenchon himself, who was part of the PS for more than 30 years, before launching his own legend in 2016. Considered an authoritarian leader, he is seen as ambiguous in relation to anti-Semitism and supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In recent days, one of the main obstacles was the historic Eurosceptic position of Mélenchon, who, in the presidential campaign, had as one of the banners the breach of treaties and “disobedience” to the European Union (EU). “Certain rules are incompatible with our program, such as the budgetary straitjacket and the defense of Europe submitted to NATO”, says part of its program of proposals.
One of the items in the agreement announced this Wednesday is dedicated to the alliance’s disposition towards the block. “Because of our histories, some of us speak of disobedience, others of temporarily revoking,” reads the joint statement of socialists and unsubmissives. “But we share a common objective: to end the liberal path of the European Union and build a new project at the service of the ecological and solidarity axis.”
He further reinforces that France’s exit from the EU, “its disintegration and the end of the single currency” will not be part of the policy of the eventual future legislature. Other topics include the freezing of prices of basic items, as a way to face inflation and the deterioration of purchasing power, and the minimum retirement age of 60 years, a flag of Mélenchon considered unfeasible for government spending.
Since the beginning of the talks, the alliance has divided the Socialists. Last week, Hollande considered the union with Unsubmissive France unacceptable. On Wednesday, former socialist prime minister Bernard Cazeneuve announced that he would leave the party after the summit’s decision to submit to Mélenchon’s leadership.
By agreement, the four acronyms will unite around a single candidate in each of the 577 districts. The Greens will be entitled to 100 districts, the Socialists to 70, the Communists to 50, while the majority will be in charge of Unsubmissive France. “There are several issues that divide the French left, and in the presidential election these differences were evident. For people who chose a candidate in the first round, these differences are important”, says Stéphanie Roza, a researcher at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, who studies origins of the French left. “When you make a deal with people who aren’t exactly in your position, you risk losing votes.”
According to Roza, the possibility of the left united front winning a majority of seats in the National Assembly is unlikely, and Mélenchon’s chances of becoming prime minister are far from possible. In addition to some flags and traits of his personality, the very rules of legislative elections weigh against the ultra-left’s ambitions.
In the two-round contest, only candidates who get at least 12.5% ​​of the votes advance to the final vote, which tends to favor the big parties. In addition, abstention is often higher among voters who did not vote for the president-elect. “It is almost certain that when someone wins the presidential election, they will also take the majority in the legislative elections”, says the researcher. Cohabitation, in which the president and the parliamentary majority are from different political forces, has not happened since 2002.
While the left unites, the parties on the right have not responded to attempts at a single ticket. However, Le Pen is expected to see her party grow in the legislature, in which she currently has a mandate and will try to keep it, as a candidate in June. In 2017, the National Meeting had only eight seats.
Macron, for his part, gave no signs of what his party’s legislative campaign should look like, as he holds talks on the composition of the new government. A majority, of course, is essential to their second-term plans, such as retirement reform. For Roza, the possibility of a “third round” is small in the June elections. “I think a third round could come from the streets, through demonstrations, protests and strikes. We could even have the emergence of a social movement.”
