(Paris) The French left-wing parties detail on Friday their painfully negotiated common program for the early legislative elections called by President Emmanuel Macron after the rout of his camp in the European elections, and which continue to implode the right .
After the earthquake caused by the triumph of the far right on Sunday and the dissolution of the National Assembly, the lower house of the French parliament, by the head of state, the main left-wing parties announced Thursday evening an agreement on a “break” program and joint lists for the elections of June 30 and July 7, despite differences on major issues such as aid to Ukraine or Europe.
The result of intense negotiations, this joint program, which concerns the “first 100 days of the mandate”, was detailed at 11:30 a.m. (5:30 a.m. Eastern time) in Paris during a press conference of the leaders leader of the New Popular Front, which takes the name of a coalition formed in France in 1936 in the face of the peril of Nazism.
The left-wing movements, from Place publique to the Insoumis via the Ecologists, the PCF and the Socialist Party, promise to repeal the pension reforms, unemployment insurance and the immigration law.
On the ultra-sensitive issue of the conflict in the Middle East, they also denounce in their program “the terrorist massacres of Hamas”.
The left-wing movements have broken down their joint programme into three parts: 15 first days of “rupture” with in particular “social emergency” measures; a “summer of bifurcations” with the presentation of several laws (purchasing power, health, education) which will be spread over the first 100 days; then a section of “transformations” over the following months.
Thursday evening, the tenors of socialists, ecologists, communists and La France insoumise (LFI, radical left), had multiplied the superlatives to salute a “considerable political event” but they have yet to agree on who will lead the government in case of victory.
Holding a social-democratic line and arriving at the head of the European left alongside the socialists, MEP Raphaël Glucksmann ended up supporting this coalition on Friday, assuring that he had “obtained” “extremely clear commitments” on Ukraine, Europe and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
But he affirmed that the leader of this alliance could not be Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the divisive figurehead of LFI, although the latter arrived very close to the second round of the last presidential election. The radical left tribune has been accused of proximity to Russia and ambiguous positions on anti-Semitism since October 7.
“You need a person who creates consensus,” Mr. Glucksmann said on France Inter radio.
Thus united for this two-round single-member ballot, the left is beginning to hope for a “victory” against the National Rally (RN, far right), which is nevertheless in a strong position, driven by its unprecedented score in the European elections (31.3%) and polls which show this party as the big favourite in the election.
One of its leaders, Marine Le Pen, promised Friday that the RN would form “a government of national unity” to “get France out of the rut” in the event of victory on the evening of July 7.
“We will bring together all French people, men and women of good will, who are aware of the catastrophic situation in our country,” declared the far-right leader during a trip.
Since Sunday, the RN, heir to the National Front, a party co-founded in 1972 by a Waffen-SS, Pierre Bousquet, has garnered several rallies including that of Eric Ciotti, president of the main conservative party in France, Les Républicains (LR).
The unprecedented alliance he proposed with the far right shattered his party, from which several former presidents of the Republic come.
Mr Ciotti was expelled by his party authorities but is clinging to his position and has filed an appeal against his ouster which is to be examined on Friday by the Paris judicial court. His opponents must convene a new political bureau to formally validate this exclusion.
In the government camp, promised a heavy defeat according to the polls, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal launched his campaign on Thursday by positioning himself as a bulwark against the “extremes”, on the right and on the left.
From Bari, Italy, where he is participating in the G7 Summit, President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday that he was “not weakened” on the international scene, despite his defeat in the European elections and the very real possibility that he would be forced to appoint a prime minister from the oppositions after the legislative elections.
In Bari, the head of state, whose popularity rating is at its lowest since his re-election in 2022, invoked another argument to try to convince voters: the approach of the Paris Olympic Games from July 26 to 11 august.
The French will “integrate the Olympic Games” into their “choices” in the legislative elections, he assured. “I think they don’t want to have an Olympic Games that looks bad” with “people who are not ready at all” to organize them, he stressed, implicitly targeting the leaders of the RN.
