French elections | Talks about leaving NATO and pro-Russia opinions – This is the image of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the left-wing bloc that won the elections

FRENCH The New People’s Front (NFP), which took a surprise victory in the parliamentary elections and consists of the left and the greens, will next head towards the complex government negotiations that lie ahead in France.

The bloc does not have an official leader or a clear candidate for prime minister, and the parties are divided among themselves on several issues.

With the leader of the Indomitable France party and the bloc’s most famous figure, known for his fiery speeches By Jean-Luc Mélenchon however, will undoubtedly have his say in the negotiations.

“The NFP will only implement its own program, and its entire program,” Mélenchon thundered at the election conference on Sunday before the other leaders of the left-wing bloc could get a word out of their mouths, reports the news agency Bloomberg.

“We will not cooperate [presidentti Emmanuel Macronin] With the Together Coalition, especially after we’ve been fighting their failures for seven years.”

Among other things, NFP has planned to cancel the previous government’s increase in the retirement age and to change laws related to immigration and unemployment insurance.

Minister of Education of the sitting French government Nicole Belloubet however, quickly acknowledged that NFP does not have the required majority to implement only its own program.

72 years old Mélenchon is an experienced fox in French politics. He has most recently served as a Member of Parliament in the years 2017–2022 and before that as a member of the European Parliament in the years 2009–2017.

Mélenchon received about 20 percent support in both the 2017 and 2022 presidential elections.

However, among other left-wing leaders, Mélenchon is considered too divisive and a radical figure. Among other things Politico writes that Mélenchon will not become prime minister on a moon day.

In 2014 Mélenchon showed sympathy towards Russia, which occupied Crimea, and stated that Russia cannot accept the expansion of NATO so close to Russia. In the same year he wrote on his blogthat it is a good thing that Ukraine lost Crimea.

French Mediacités media stated in his fact-checking in connection with the 2022 presidential elections that Mélenchon supported Russian opinions for a long time in the wars in Ukraine and Syria, for example.

However, he has distanced himself from Russia since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Mélenchon last said in 2019 that he admires Venezuela’s leaders, who are considered undemocratic Nicolás Maduro and Hugo Chávez. In January 2022, his party presented France’s withdrawal from NATO.

Mélenchon has also been accused of anti-Semitism for more than ten years. Le Monde according to Mélenchon and his party have refused to call Hamas a terrorist organization, even though the EU already named Hamas a terrorist organization years ago.

In the fall of 2023, Mélenchon accused the National Coalition Yaël Braun-Pivet “camping in Tel Aviv” when he visited Israel after the Hamas attack.

Moroccan Born in Tangier, Mélenchon moved to mainland France at the age of 11. He joined the Socialist Party at the age of 25 in 1976.

He was first elected as a local politician in the early 1980s and to the French upper house in 1986. He served, among other things, as a junior minister in the Ministry of Education in the early 2000s.

Mélenchon left the Socialist Party in 2008 when he felt it had become too close to the business world. He founded a new left-wing party in France in 2008, and then a new one, Indomitable France, in 2016.