The Socialist Party adopted Tuesday evening, unanimously by its national office, its strategic orientation text for the European elections, which provides for the principle of an autonomous list and will be submitted on October 5 to the vote of the militants, announced the party. The 81 French MEPs will be elected on June 9, 2024.
The national office also voted unanimously on the programmatic content of the European project, also submitted to the vote of the activists on the same date, and which may be subject to amendments by the federations, until the holding a national closing convention on October 14th.
Even if the PS remains internally divided on the Nupes agreement concluded with LFI, EELV and the PCF in March 2022, the three currents of the party (that of national secretary Olivier Faure, majority and pro-Nupes, and those of its opponents Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol and Hélène Geoffroy, hostile to Nupes) managed to agree on the strategy, with the drafting of a compromise.
“Not the necessary conditions” for a common list
While LFI calls for a common list of Nupes to the Europeans, the strategic text, not amendable, acts on the principle of an autonomous list, and specifies that the PS has “always considered” that its project would dictate its alliances, “and not the ‘reverse “.
“Our desire for dialogue remains. But we note that the decision of the ecologists and the communists to leave under their own colors in the European elections did not make it possible to study the conditions necessary for a common list, and in particular to rediscuss the points of disagreement” noted on “the questions European and international during the constitution of the Nupes in 2022”, it is written.
But the Socialist Party remains “fully committed to the strategy of bringing together the left and ecology”, which “found its political expression during the legislative elections of 2022 with the Nupes and its intergroup in the National Assembly”, continues the text.
He adds that “the union of the left and environmentalists is the necessary strategy to lead the fight against the policies of the President of the Republic and to obstruct the arrival of the RN in power”.
List decided at the end of the year
Without mentioning the term single candidacy of the left for the presidential election of 2027, which Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol and Hélène Geoffroy refused, arguing that it preempted the next PS congress, the text explains that it will be necessary to “create the conditions for a common program and rallying candidacies for the municipal, presidential and legislative elections by putting the Socialist Party back at the heart of the left”.
Olivier Faure absolutely wanted to integrate this objective into the text, so as “not to despair left-wing voters who want union”. The head of the list and the composition of the list should not be decided before the end of the year. The text also provides for the construction “around the PS of an open list” to all those “recognizing themselves in the principles of their project”.
But while his opponents want the list to be extended to La Convention, the movement of former Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, hostile to Nupes, Olivier Faure does not hide his reluctance vis-à-vis the latter, who “spends his time wiping his feet on the rest of the left”, according to him.
The programmatic text, which has 83 pages, is entitled “Tilting Europe, From Neoliberalism to Ecological Socialism”.