“She shows boldness, courage.” While the “coup” of Ségolène Royal, who has offered to lead a list of union of the left in the next European elections, has been greeted with skepticism and irony among the parties of the Nupes, Jean-Luc Mélenchon hailed Saturday August 26 “tremendous help”, saying “to approve his initiative, his contribution to the battle for the union”

“She knows very well that she will not only get compliments”, admitted the leader of rebellious France in an interview with TF1, on the sidelines of the summer universities of her movement which are held in the Drôme. However, he assures, “reason dictates that we are united”, despite the refusal already expressed by EELV and the Socialist Party.

“It is a question of launching a dynamic of union”, Ségolène Royal had declared Friday to the press, during the summer universities of La France insoumise. Could she lead this list herself? “That’s the idea,” she replied, adding that she had been thinking about the project since “before the summer.”

The initiative had been freshly welcomed in the ranks of the PS, EELV and among some of the LFI activists. After the environmentalists and the communists, who have already designated their respective heads of lists for the European elections in June, the socialists are also preparing to leave alone. PS boss Olivier Faure thus indicated on Friday that he did not see “what would make it possible to hope for a single list”, until his party decides on this point at the end of September.

The European question remains one of the main stumbling blocks between the ecologists and the PS on the one hand, holding a pro-European or even federalist line, and La France Insoumise and the Communist Party on the other, opposed to several treaties of the European Union