France’s left-wing parties finally reach agreement on joint program for snap elections

After intense negotiations, the leftist “Front populaire” alliance unveiled its program on Friday (June 14), three weeks ahead of the early parliamentary elections on June 30 and July 7.

French President Emmanuel Macron announced the dissolution of the National Assembly on Sunday evening, after losing the European elections to Jordan Bardella’s Rassemblement national (RN, ID).

The Parti socialiste (PS, S&D), la France Insoumise (LFI, The Left), les Verts (EELV, the Greens) and the Parti communiste français (PCF, The Left) decided to join forces for the snap legislative elections.

Coming together under the name “Front populaire”, the leaders of the left-wing parties presented their program on Friday at a press conference in Paris, after tense negotiations throughout the week.

“We are extremely proud to be with the whole left and the ecologists”, said the head of the PS Olivier Faure, speaking on behalf its party.

“We have often heard it said that we are irreconcilable (…). When the essential is at stake, we are there, always there”, he added.

The text also contains a hundred of measures, with a section on diplomacy particularly with regard to Ukraine and Palestine.

With regard to Ukraine, the left-wing coalition will “unwaveringly defend the sovereignty and freedom of the Ukrainian people.”

This could involve the delivery of weapons, the cancellation of its foreign debt, the seizure of the assets of the oligarchs who contribute to the Russian war effort, and the dispatch of the UN to secure the nuclear power plants.

There will nevertheless be “red lines, notably on the military intervention of French troops on the ground”, LFI coordinator Manuel Bompard was keen to point out on RTL radio.

Concerning Palestine, the Front populaire agreed to condemn the “terrorist massacres” of Hamas, and called for “an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and compliance with the order of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which unambiguously refers to a risk of “genocide”.

Finally, the program acknowledges a “worrying, unprecedented explosion” of “racist, anti-Semitic and Islamophobic acts” in France.

This statement breaks with the polemical words of LFI’s leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who in early June considered that anti-Semitism “remains residual in France”.

Europe

The Front populaire MPs also revealed some of their proposals concerning the EU.

They reject the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) , wanting an end to free-trade treaties such as CETA and Mercosur, and wish to revise the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

At the same time, they want to propose a “European pact for the climate and social emergency,” setting up a mechanism for top-down tax harmonisation between states, to put an end to “social and fiscal dumping policies.”

Purchasing power

The Front populaire wishes to index link salaries to inflation, raise the minimum wage to 1,600 euros net, and re-introduce a wealth tax.

The Left’s common program also plans to “freeze the prices of basic necessities”, said LFI member of the European parliament, Manon Aubry, on franceinfo on Friday morning.

The Front populaire also wants to ditch three key reforms of Macron’s government: unemployment insurance reform, pension reform and the immigration law.

“Their program is a total delusion […] it’s a guarantee for (economic) downgrading, mass unemployment and leaving the European Union,” said Economy and Finance minister Bruno Le Maire on Franceinfo on Friday morning.

[Edited by Rajnish Singh]

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