It is a choice that marks a new step for the PCF towards autonomy vis-à-vis the Nupes. Léon Deffontaines was appointed leader of the Communists in the European elections of 2024 on Saturday. He will have the difficult mission of raising the score of his party, which did not reach 3% in the European elections in 2019 and in the presidential election in 2022.
Aged 27, the former boss of the Young Communists (JC) is one of the lieutenants of national secretary Fabien Roussel, for whom he was the spokesman for the presidential election. “I thank the national council of the PCF for having appointed me leader”, he declared on Twitter, saying he was “determined to go to the reconquest of the popular electorate”.
The line against Mélenchon by Fabien Roussel
The title of leader, endorsed by the national council of the party, leaves room for possible alliances on the left, but this scenario has become unlikely in recent weeks. Not just because environmentalists, who scored the biggest in 2019 on the left, are determined to go it alone. But also because Fabien Roussel wants to continue to reexpose the PCF, with an anti-Melenchonist line.
Léon Deffontaines will focus his campaign on the reorientation of Europe towards the social. For this, he should hold a frontally Eurosceptic line. When he was still secretary general, the 43rd congress of the JC, in January 2022, adopted a text which “claims to leave the EU and the euro zone”. “France must stop respecting the European treaties which serve capitalist interests and oppose any policy of social progress”.
The official line of the PCF is not so radical. But that does not prevent Léon Deffontaines from declaring that the rebellious “Manon Aubry wants so much to erase the differences with EELV (to make a union list) that we no longer know where LFI lives”. Because training has watered down his euroscepticism. However, he promises that he will hit above all on the National Rally and his probable head of the list Jordan Bardella.
A youth in the current constituency of François Ruffin
Born in Amiens, Léon Deffontaines grew up in the current constituency of François Ruffin, in a working-class district. It is also the former deputy of the rebellious deputy, Zoé Desbureaux, who offers him to join the Young Communists, at 17 years old. His entry into the JC marks his political flight – he will become its leader in 2019. He begins studies in law and political science, as well as in educational sciences, and does a multitude of odd jobs.
His character also has a hard facet, denounces on condition of anonymity an activist who rubbed shoulders with him the year of the youth congress in 2019: “He participated in the male movement of intimidation of girls who wanted to express themselves on the sexual violence, he protected his friends”. But Léon Deffontaines denies, pointing out that as head of the JC, he himself forged a partnership with the Collectif féministe contre le rape in order to better collect the words of the victims.