France’s liberal President Emmanuel Macron has won re-election. But without a majority in parliament, he will find it difficult to implement his policies. United, the left camp wants to challenge him for this majority. But not everyone is enthusiastic about the alliance.
France’s left-wing camp wants to join forces to oust re-elected President Emmanuel Macron from a majority in the French House of Commons in June’s general election.
After the Greens and the Communists, the Socialists also agreed to an alliance with Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s left-wing party LFI on Friday night. On Saturday, the parties want to start the election campaign together. The merger of the fragmented camp is historic and could be dangerous for Macron. But the Socialist Party also has concerns about the alliance.
Left Alliance Nouvelle Union Populaire Écologique et Sociale
The merger to form the Nouvelle Union Populaire Écologique et Sociale has the clear goal of gaining a majority in the National Assembly in the election and thus significantly restricting the power of the liberal head of state, Macron. Should the alliance win the parliamentary majority, Macron would effectively be forced to appoint a prime minister from among their ranks. According to the agreements, this should then be Mélenchon. Macron could then no longer easily implement his plans with such a “cohabitation”.
How likely it is that the left will win is still difficult to estimate. Although Macron currently has a stable majority with other center parties and the elected president has always been confirmed in the parliamentary elections, frustration and disappointment with Macron’s first term in office are likely to cost him votes. According to a poll from late April, only about a quarter of the French wanted Macron’s camp to win the general election. 35 percent were in favor of a victory for the left.
Irrespective of the outcome of the election, the merger has already caused some grumbling among the parties involved. The former socialist Mélenchon, who is the driving force in the alliance, and his party LFI are clearly further to the left than the Greens and the socialists. A contentious point in the negotiations was the European policy. Because while LFI is partly Eurosceptic, the Socialist Party sees itself as clearly pro-European. Now it was jointly agreed that certain rules in the European Union could be circumvented, at least temporarily, in order to implement one’s policy.
reservations among the socialists
During the negotiations, the socialist party leadership in particular had to hear from former party leaders that they were submitting to the LFI and not being true to its basic principles. Former Socialist Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, for example, announced his departure from the party as a reaction to the agreement. Unlike in previous alliances, the former People’s Party is now not the leading force. With their historically poor result of 1.75 percent in the presidential election, the Socialists had no claim to leadership over Mélenchon, who got 21.95 percent, and were therefore forced to make certain concessions.
In view of this, some socialists, such as the last socialist president François Hollande, are concerned that the merger could be the death knell for the party. At the same time, it is questionable whether, and if so how many constituencies, the weakened socialists could have gotten themselves alone. Because of the majority voting system, small parties without important partners have a hard time in the parliamentary elections in France.
Source: Stern
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