In the parties that make up the New Popular Front (NFP) of France, everyone agrees on the importance of preserving unity, although there are major disagreements about how to maintain it. In recent days, the different parties that form the progressive alliance are proposing different paths to face the new political stage opened after the fall of Michel Barnier and his Government.
The secretary general of the Socialist Party, Olivier Faure, indicated this Friday that his party is willing to negotiate with the coalition of Emmanuel Macron and the traditional right of the Republicans on the basis of “reciprocal concessions.” The left of France Insoumise, the majority group in the NFP coalition, rejects this possibility.
Faure will meet this Friday with Macron at the Elysée. “It is necessary that we find a solution because we cannot paralyze the country for months,” he said. “The rebels have excluded themselves from this negotiation.
Built in record time to attend the legislative elections last summer together, the NFP still maintains cohesion, despite the fissures that continue to appear between the formations that compose it. For several days now, the four parties (Rebellious France, Ecology Europe-The Greens, Socialist Party and Communist Party) have been reflecting on the strategy to follow to convince or pressure Emmanuel Macron to appoint a progressive prime minister.
To do this, they seek not to repeat the script of last summer, when the president refused to accept the common candidacy of the economist Lucie Castets. A few days ago Castets herself, in the company of the national secretary of Europe Ecology-The Greens, Marine Tondelier, launched a common action initiative. The two leaders demand that their partners put aside the personal ambitions of certain progressive figures and defend “common candidates” from the left to access the Government and for the 2027 presidential election.
“Now we have to organize if we want to obtain a majority in Parliament and win the next presidential election,” they stated in an article published in the newspaper Ouest-Francewhich was followed by a series of radio and television interviews in the following days.
“The only condition is not to start with a single name in mind and not have your own or stable candidate to start working. Otherwise, you have already lost,” Castets added in the France Info microphones. Castets assures that she is “available” to be prime minister, but affirms that she will not be an “obstacle” in the negotiations.
This Thursday, Marine Tondelier published another open letter addressed to the president in which she demands that he elect “a figure from the left and environmentalists” as head of the Government, although without mentioning any specific name. The proposal by Tondelier and Castets implies a negotiation with the deputies of the centrist coalition to avoid a motion of censure like the one that cost Michel Barnier his job. Negotiation that would be carried out on the basis of the NFP program.
“Non-censorship” pact
On Wednesday, the environmental parliamentary group had announced a “roadmap for the [futuro] government” based on a “set of eleven priority measures.” A roadmap that includes the increase in the minimum wage, minimum social benefits and the repeal of the pension reform, a central element of the NFP program that Macron and his party’s deputies oppose.
Along these lines, several PS deputies had already advanced in the summer the idea of a “non-censorship” pact, in which Macron would appoint a progressive prime minister who would renounce the use of article 49.3 (which allows texts to be approved by decree, without a vote). ) in exchange for an agreement so that the centrist forces commit to not voting any censure.
At that time, the idea was poorly received by the majority of the NFP, focused on imposing the common program and the alliance candidate on Macron. However, in the current situation, the pressure after Barnier’s fall and the risk of institutional blockage can serve as an accelerator.
The president of the PS group in the Assembly, Boris Vallaud, and the first secretary of the party, Olivier Faure, are openly defending this option. And the socialist proposal – in theory compatible with Marine Tondelier’s proposal – is beginning to receive more and more support among environmentalists to unblock the situation.
LFI rules out agreements with Macron
France Insoumise (LFI), for its part, has distanced itself from any possible negotiation with the Macronist forces and continues to demand the resignation of the president as the only way out of the political crisis. “I am looking for a stable solution for my country and that stability involves the resignation of the President of the Republic,” stated the LFI coordinator, Manuel Bompard, in an interview on BFM-TV.
In his first intervention since the motion of censure, Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday night that will not resign and that he will fulfill his mandate to the end, arguing that “the extreme right and the extreme left have united in an anti-republican front.”
Last Friday, even before it was confirmed that the censure against Barnier was going to be successful, Jean-Luc Mélenchon had begun the call for a single presidential candidacy on the left. “We are in favor of a joint candidacy, but on the basis of the program. And since we are going to go with that program, whoever wants to come will be welcome,” said the party leader during a speech to militants in Paris.
Mathilde Panot, president of the LFI group in the Assembly, has also warned that her party would vote to censure any prime minister who does not come from the New Popular Front (NFP). Statements directed in particular at socialist figures critical of the alliance, such as former Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, whose name is circulating again these days as a possible replacement for Barnier.
Macron’s bloc demands a break with LFI
In recent days, the proposal for a “non-censorship” pact has also been mentioned by deputies of the centrist coalition. The leader of Renacimiento (the party founded by Macron), Gabriel Attal, mentioned it in his speech in the chamber during the motion of censure, asking the socialists to “free themselves” from LFI.
The forces of the Macronist coalition are trying to cause a fracture in the NFP that isolates LFI and creates a new balance in the Assembly, with a large central bloc of “constitutionalist” parties that excludes the rebels and the extreme right.
However, Attal’s vision of the agreement does not seem, at the moment, to be the same as that of the socialists. Emmanuel Macron’s former prime minister proposes “a coalition of the forces of the republican arc” (which would include environmentalists and communists, but not LFI) and which would imply a government with centrist and progressive ministers. That executive would only apply some consensual measures until the next dissolution of the Assembly.
Along these same lines, the still Minister of Defense, the Macronist Sebastien Lecornu —another of the names circulating in the press as a replacement for Barnier—, stated that “everything possible must be done so that the socialists separate from France Insoumise.” “I do not come from the left, but I am attached to the values of our republic; I think we have to dialogue, because the responsibility of my political family is to get the Socialist Party to change its position.”
However, despite the disagreements that persist between LFI and its NFP partners, particularly socialists, and the pressure to unblock the situation, two elements encourage leftist formations to maintain unity: on the one hand, no one wants appearing before his voters as responsible for the breakup of the progressive bloc; On the other hand, the electoral alliance has demonstrated its effectiveness in the legislative elections and everything indicates that these elections will be repeated as soon as possible (the French Constitution prevents their holding until one year after the last dissolution).
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