The agreement, described as “historic” by its leaders, could be joined shortly by the Socialist Party and the Communist Party, which are negotiating separately with La Francia Insumisa
La France Insumisa (LFI), Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s party, and Europe-Ecology The Greens (EELV) reached an agreement today to stand together for the legislative elections next June under the label “New Popular Ecological and Social”. The agreement, described as “historic” by its leaders, could soon be joined by the Socialist Party and the Communist Party, which are negotiating separately with La Francia Insumisa.
The agreement stipulates that a hundred constituencies, of the 577 that are at stake in the legislative elections, will be reserved for ecologist candidates. In these two-round elections, the French must elect the 577 members of the National Assembly in the 577 constituencies that exist.
La France Insumisa, the third most voted in the first round of the presidential elections, trusts that these agreements with the ecologists and other leftist parties will allow them to obtain a majority of deputies in the National Assembly. According to his calculations, this would force President Emmanuel Macron to appoint Mélenchon as prime minister as the leader of the parliamentary majority. This cohabitation government could carry out more progressive policies than those announced by Macron.
The environmentalists and La Francia Insumisa have agreed on several points of the program: raising the minimum wage to 1,400 euros, retirement at 60 years, the blocking of prices of basic necessities, the establishment of the VI Republic and the referendum of citizen initiative.
They have also achieved a compromise on the European Union. During the campaign for the presidential elections, La France Insumisa, the most eurosceptic party, defended “disobedience” of the European treaties, which was opposed by The Greens and the Socialists, two clearly Europeanist formations.
The coalition between ecologists and “melenchonistas” will not advocate an exit of France from the European Union or the euro. The agreement, however, opens the door to an eventual disobedience of “certain European rules”, such as the stability and growth pact, the right to competition or “the productivist and neoliberal guidelines” of the Common Agricultural Policy (PAC), but always “in compliance with the rule of law”
La France Insumisa had already reached an agreement with Generations last Thursday, the minority party founded by former socialist Benoît Hamon, although they had not specified the number of constituencies reserved for the candidates of this small left-wing formation.
Negotiations between La France Insumisa and the Socialist Party (PS) continue, despite the opposition of historical socialist members, including former president François Hollande. He warned a few days ago that the PS, which suffered a blow in the presidential elections in April, could “disappear” if it reached an electoral agreement with La Francia Insumisa.
On the other hand, the negotiations between the LFI and the Communist Party (PCF) seem very advanced. “There is no plan B. There is only one plan A: unite to build that great coalition of the left to have our revenge of the presidential elections,” said today on FranceInfo the leader of the PCF, Fabien Roussel, who hopes to announce “today” a according to La Francia Insumisa.
Mélenchon, who was the most voted left-wing candidate in the first round of the presidential elections, obtained 22% of the vote, but failed to qualify for the second round, which was contested by the centrist-liberal Emmanuel Macron and the far-right Marine Le Pen. The ecologist Yannick Jadot obtained 4.6% of the votes; the communist Roussel, 2.28%; and the socialist Anne Hidalgo, 1.75%.
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