“Great help”. The leader of rebellious France Jean-Luc Mélenchon welcomed on Saturday the coup of Ségolène Royal, who offered to lead a list of union of the left in the European elections, but aroused skepticism in the other parties of Nupes. “Ségolène Royal is showing audacity, courage and she knows very well that she will not only have compliments, but I want to approve her initiative, her contribution to the battle for the union”, said Jean- Luc Mélenchon, in an interview with TF1, on the sidelines of the summer universities of his movement which are held in the Drôme, in Châteauneuf-sur-Isère.
“It is a question of launching a dynamic of union”, declared Friday Ségolène Royal, creating the surprise in the rows of the left. Could she lead this list herself? “That’s the idea,” replied the former socialist minister, adding that she had been thinking about this project since “before the summer”. In the light of this declaration by the finalist of the 2007 presidential election, Jean-Luc Mélenchon invited “all those” who think that the union “is the choice of reason” to reveal themselves, in order to put pressure on the leaders ecologists, communists and socialists.
Towards a common list for European women?
LFI has been campaigning for months without success for a common list for the European women of June 2024. And the subject contributes greatly to the tensions that the alliance of left-wing parties is going through. A little earlier, in Blois, where the Socialists hold their summer university, their first secretary Olivier Faure reaffirmed, without quoting Ségolène Royal, to take note of “the decision of the Communists and the ecologists to leave under their own colors” which makes an autonomous list of socialists more likely. But for him, “what will happen to the Europeans does not hinder the prospect of union in 2027”, for the presidential election.
It is as much the prospect of having the former presidential candidate as head of the list as that of an alliance with France Insoumise that the Socialists reject, even if a “unionist” line persists, embodied by the deputy of Essonne Jerome Guedj. The parliamentarian, who met Ségolène Royal “in recent weeks”, regretted Olivier Faure’s position on RMC on Saturday morning. “Me, I call for us not to close the curtain like that brutally” to a possible union list.
If he does not comment on the personality of Ségolène Royal to lead it, the deputy insists on the “dozens of points of convergence” between the different parties of the New Popular, Ecological and Social Union (Nupes). However, the European question remains one of the main stumbling blocks between Europe Écologie-Les Verts (EELV) and the PS on the one hand, holding a pro-European or even federalist line, and LFI and the Communist Party of the other, opposed to several treaties of the European Union.
Royal, a “non-event”
Differences that did not fail to recall Saturday morning on France 2 François Kalfon, member of the national office of the Socialist Party, figure of the anti-Nupes line. “Are we socialists ready to disobey the (European) treaties?”, he wondered, before recalling that his party was “clear” on the question of Ukraine, as opposed to the Insoumis . If the caciques of the PS are mainly in favor of an independent list, the young socialists are “very favorable to the union”, as their president Emma Rafowicz explains. “But we are very loyal to our party,” she adds.
Nobody, on the other hand, seems seduced by the figure of Ségolène Royal. “It’s the eternal return of a talented woman but who is unable to bring the socialists together”, launched François Kalfon. “I know it’s vintage fashion, but hey …”, also quipped Cyrielle Châtelain, the head of the environmental deputies, who participated in debates in Blois, where her socialist colleague Arthur Delaporte speaks of a ” non-event”.
“When you are a columnist at (Cyril) Hanouna, you have to make a buzz, obviously, she is already a columnist”, mocks a socialist deputy. The former president of the Poitou-Charente region will indeed be present in the controversial program Touche pas à mon poste, on C8, at the start of the school year. A participation criticized on the left, in the same way as ambiguous statements in recent months on the war in Ukraine or the Covid-19 pandemic.