France: EU files the left coalition agrees on – and those it could divorce over 

The left-wing Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) coalition, the relative winner of France’s snap legislative elections, is set to lead negotiations on a future coalition government but internal disagreements over a few fundamental EU files could test the alliance’s survival. 

The quick joining of forces between the Communists, the far-left La France insoumise (LFI), the Socialists, and the Greens after Emmanuel Macron announced on 9 June he would dissolve the National Assembly, was a major surprise.

The campaign for EU elections saw the four parties run separate campaigns, with major disagreements and splits along the way. No one expected they would agree a joint manifesto just days into the snap legislative campaign. 

But Sunday’s (7 July) results told a different story: The NFP came first with 178 seats, ahead of Macron’s Ensemble coalition (150) and the far-right Rassemblement national and their allies (143). 

Now the onus is on the left, and it will test how resilient their alliance is, as cracks are already showing over the strategy it should adopt to weigh in on future policymaking, while some fundamental disagreements remain on key EU files.

What the left disagrees on

Here are two key policy conversations left-wing political forces largely disagree on: geopolitics and nuclear.

Support to Ukraine and EU defence 

Where the Socialists and the Greens have always said they were in favour of active military and financial support to Ukraine, LFI and the Communists have been more ambivalent, favouring an immediate ceasefire and international peace negotiations. 

“There can be no other outcome than one in which there are no winners and losers,” LFI’s figurehead Jean-Luc Mélenchon said in March, calling for peace “that gives each of the two parties mutual guarantees”. 

LFI vowed in their EU elections manifesto and in the NFP’s programme to continue support to Ukraine but remains murky over the delivery of long-range missiles, and flat-out refuses to send military instructors on Ukrainian soil. 

That is a world away from socialists and greens’ calls during the EU campaign for more financial aid, and the delivery of all necessary weapons. The then-candidate Raphaël Glucksmann had called for a €100 billion Ukraine fund to ramp up EU defence industrial capacities, rounded up through new EU joint debt – though he too ruled out sending soldiers over to Kyiv. 

NATO

To LFI and the Communists, France’s world power can only be reinforced if NATO is out of the picture: “By agreeing to join NATO, the EU is part of a US strategy to escalate tensions across the globe,” the LFI EU election manifesto says. 

Socialists, however, have a radically different take, supporting wholeheartedly NATO’s work on the EU Eastern flank. “Socialists are internationalists: We accept that force can be used to help our allies and that our action must take place within NATO and European frameworks,” the party said

Such is the disagreement over this issue that it was left out of the NFP programme altogether.

Enlargement

LFI and communists have not ruled out enlargement to Ukraine if economic harmonisation is ensured.

Socialists and the greens have more clearly said Ukraine and Moldova should be welcomed into the EU, calling it a “necessity” to enhance the bloc as a world superpower, though acknowledging this would take years to materialise. 

Nuclear

Nuclear energy is another policy topic on which the left coalition remained silent when drafting their joint manifesto, as the French Parliament – before its dissolution – approved a bill to create six new-generation nuclear reactors by 2035. 

Both LFI and the greens are against nuclear and have vowed to move to 100% renewable energy by 2040 to 2050. 

Conversely, the Communists are staunch supporters of the atom. 

The stance is more nuanced among the socialists, who agree the move to renewables is critical but give no clear date for full nuclear divestment. Nuclear energy, Glucksmann’s EU elections manifesto reads, is to be deemed a “transitional energy source”. 

What the left agrees on

There is a lot that left-wing forces agree on – and here is the snippet of the EU files where they could wage a common fight. 

Stability and Growth Pact

NFP’s manifesto “refuses” the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), which they say will only bring back austerity across the EU. All of its MEPs voted against it in the European Parliament last April. 

“Instead of creating absurd new budgetary rules, our political energies should be devoted to granting the EU the tools it needs to invest massively in defence, renewables, the power grid, industry and so on”, French socialist-leaning MEP Aurore Lalucq wrote in an opinion piece last January. 

EU tax on great wealth

The left camp has continuously called for an end to a veto vote for fiscal policy issues and stressed the need to harmonise tax practices across the bloc. 

One of them, Aurore Lalucq, is also at the forefront of a European Citizens Initiative that would tax the EU’s richest “to finance the ecological and social transition” – estimated to bring in an extra €220 bln a year. 

The NFP manifesto is clear that a more expansive tax system must be implemented both domestically and at the EU level – not only on personal wealth but also on multinationals. 

The 2023 pensions reform

No policy is more strongly rejected by the left than Emmanuel Macron’s controversial pensions reform, painfully adopted just a year ago. 

All want to repeal this bill, which pushes the legal retirement age from 62 to 64. 

Instead, the NFP wants to bring it back to 60 years of age, and peg retirement pay onto inflation – an initiative worth some €27-53 million, economists estimate. 

This might clash with the European Commission’s yearly recommendation that the legal age be raised to ensure retirement systems remain economically viable – as France is set to enter an Excessive Deficit Procedure to rein in its debt and deficit.

[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic]

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