Mélenchon supports Ségolène Royal's initiative for European women, contrary to the PS and EELV

August 26, 2023

“A tremendous help”: the leader of La France insoumise Jean-Luc Mélenchon welcomed on Saturday the coup d’brilliance of Ségolène Royal, who offered to lead a list of union of the left in the European elections, but aroused the skepticism in the other Nupes parties.

“Ségolène Royal shows 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’s about launching a dynamic of union,” said Ségolène Royal on Friday, creating surprise in the ranks 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”.

“A lot of people have asked me. I’m not doing this alone,” added Saturday the one who returned her PS card more than six years ago, considering herself “above the political apparatus”.

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 environmental leaders , communists and socialists.

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.

“We will see if there is a desire for a common future thanks to Ségolène Royal”, quipped from Blois, where the Socialists hold their summer university, their First Secretary Olivier Faure. A reference to the name of Mrs. Royal’s political association.

In addition, he reaffirmed taking note of “the decision of the communists and ecologists to leave under their own colors” which makes an autonomous list of socialists more likely.

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.

“I call for us not to close the curtain like that brutally” to a possible union list, declared Saturday on RMC the one who indicated having met Ségolène Royal “in recent weeks”, insisting 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 Ecologie-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.

“Are we socialists ready to disobey the (European) treaties?” Asked France 2 François Kalfon, figure of the anti-Nupes line within the national office of the PS, before recalling that his party was “clear” on the question of Ukraine, as opposed to the Insoumis. About Ségolène Royal, he points to “the eternal return of a talented woman who is unable to bring the socialists together”.

Raphaël Glucksmann, who pleads to lead the PS list again in the June election, has also warned: a Royal candidacy will not “rot my campaign” since it is “difficult to find a position more diametrically opposed than mine “to that of the unfortunate finalist in the 2007 presidential election.

And if, unlike their elders, the young socialists are “very favorable to the union”, according to their president Emma Rafowicz, “we are very loyal to our party”, she hastens to add.

EELV MEP Yannick Jadot for his part denounced an “instrumentalization of the European debate”, questioning: “Are we going to campaign with someone who challenges Russian war crimes?” Just as severe, the boss of the PCF, Fabien Roussel: “It makes me smile, because I’m polite…”

While Ségolène Royal must hold a column at the start of the school year in a program by Cyril Hanouna on C8, a socialist deputy sums up: “When you are a columnist at Hanouna, you have to make a buzz. Obviously, she is already a columnist”.

This television participation, announced this summer, had already been widely criticized on the left, in the same way as ambiguous statements in recent months on the war in Ukraine or the Covid-19 pandemic.