France’s left-wing parties attempted Friday to patch together an alliance ahead of June parliamentary elections which would give them a chance of thwarting newly re-elected President Emmanuel Macron.
The left fielded four major candidates in France’s April presidential election, splitting the vote. All of them were eliminated in the first round. The hard-left France Unbowed party, the Socialists, the Greens and the Communists are now attempting to agree a united front before a weekend deadline ahead of the June 12 and 19 polls.
“I’m very hopeful that these negotiations will come to a successful end in the next few hours,” the head of the environmentalist EELV party, Julien Bayou, told the France 2 channel. “We can agree on the fundamentals and much more,” he said, adding that “a deal was in sight” between his party and France Unbowed, known in French by its initials LFI.
The multi-party talks are being led by LFI chief Jean-Luc Melenchon, who finished third in the presidential election and now the dominant figure on the French left.
The 70-year-old former Trotskyist has declared his aim of becoming prime minister under Macron in order to block the president’s reform plans which include raising the retirement age.
The Socialist Party, which is fighting for survival after winning less than two percent in the presidential election, indicated Friday that it could broadly accept 12 core policy proposals by Melenchon.
These include raising the minimum wage, reducing the retirement age to 60 and rolling back labour market reforms. But the party then suspended talks and called for a “guarantee” that all parties would be respected in the alliance and that Melenchon “ends any hegemonic way of thinking.”
Analysts say that any alliance will require left-wing parties to overcome historic rivalries and hammer out a tricky agreement to divide up parliamentary constituencies.
The talks are part of a restructuring of French politics following Macron’s re-election triumph over far-right candidate Marine Le Pen in the second round last Sunday.
With France’s traditional left- and right-wing parties pushed to the margins, three new dominant blocs have emerged — Macron in the centre, Le Pen on the right and Melenchon on the left.
Former Socialist president Francois Hollande, who is known to be keen to re-enter politics, has warned the proposed left-wing tie-up could amount to the “disappearance” of the Socialists.
But political scientist Remi Lefebvre told AFP that the party “has absolutely no other option” than the deal because it risks losing “most” of its MPs in June.
Melenchon, who scored 22 percent of the first-round presidential vote, has also been talking to the Communist Party, whose candidate Fabien Roussel scored 2.3 percent in the presidential vote. Roussel, however, warned Thursday that talks were at a “standstill”.