(Updated with validation of the agreement by the communists)
by Elizabeth Pineau
PARIS, May 3 (Reuters) – After Europe Ecologie-Les Verts (EELV), the Communist Party in turn sealed an agreement on Tuesday with La France insoumise (LFI) in view of the June legislative elections, while negotiations continued with the Socialist Party (PS).
The authorities of Fabien Roussel’s party, which obtained 2.3% of the votes in the first round of the presidential election, approved in the afternoon the agreement reached with that of Jean-Luc Mélenchon who, on the strength of his 22% on April 10, hopes to impose cohabitation on Emmanuel Macron by allowing the left to have a majority in the National Assembly.
“Our National Council has just validated the agreement,” wrote on Twitter Igor Zamichiei, coordinator of the national executive of the Communist Party.
“Mélenchon Prime Minister” can be read on the campaign posters posted by LFI activists without waiting for the outcome of negotiations aimed at forming a coalition called “New Popular Ecologist and Social Union” for the legislative elections of 12 and 19 June.
“History is being written on this anniversary of the Front Populaire,” LFI MEP Manon Aubry told the press at the end of the morning, referring to the victory of the Front Populaire on May 3, 1936.
“We have EELV, the Communist Party on our side, and I hope soon the Socialist Party”, she continued, however, mentioning “a lot of points of tension” with the PS whose candidate Anne Hidalgo n only got 1.7% of the vote on April 10.
Manuel Bompard, legislative campaign director for LFI and MEP, hoped that an agreement could be reached by the end of the day, while the distribution of constituencies is the main bone of contention.
“The Socialist Party is struggling to integrate its result in the presidential election,” Manuel Bompard told the press. “We are making a proposal which seems to us to be up to the moment, to the challenge, which respects the territorial establishment of the Socialist Party”.
RIDING SHARING
The agreement made on Sunday evening with Europe-Ecologie-les Verts (EELV) will allow them to be present in around a hundred constituencies, with the hope of obtaining a group of deputies in the lower house, ie 15 elected. About fifty would have been granted to the Communists, according to a source at the PCF.
Without revealing the number of constituencies proposed to the party led by Olivier Faure, an LFI participant in the negotiations reports on condition of anonymity that the camp of Jean-Luc Mélenchon has been “generous” with the PS. “But at some point there is a limit for our voters, for us, for the other partners as well, and at the moment they are above that limit,” he added.
Among other emblematic proposals of the common program are the increase of the minimum wage to 1,400 euros, the return to retirement at 60 and “genuine ecological planning”.
The PCF press release indicates that the agreement provides for “the renationalization of EDF EDF.PA, ENGIE ENGIE.PA, motorways and airports”.
The version signed with EELV specifies that the signatories will be “ready to disobey certain European rules” while stressing that “France cannot have as its policy either the exit from the Union, nor its disintegration, nor the end of the single currency. “.
“Today all the left-wing parties with whom we are talking agree to question a certain number of European rules which are in contradiction with our ambitions,” Manon Aubry explained to Reuters on Tuesday.
This “disobedience” to European rules, but also LFI’s radical positions on issues relating to economic policy and secularism are deemed unacceptable by many PS executives who are supporters of a social-democratic line, for whom an agreement with LFI returns to make their party disappear.
“Part of the socialist electorate will prefer to abstain or vote for Macron,” said former socialist minister Stéphane Le Foll in Le Parisien.
“The radicalism of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s program will scare away our voters and those of environmentalists towards Emmanuel Macron, who must rub his hands on all this”, added on RMC the former First Secretary of the PS Jean-Christophe Cambadélis.
(Report Elizabeth Pineau with Myriam Rivet, edited by Jean-Michel Bélot and Tangi Salaün)