Europeans: PS agrees with autonomous list principle despite internal divisions

The general PS-LFI list is not visible. On Tuesday evening, the Socialist Party unanimously adopted in its national office the text of the strategic orientation of the European elections, which provides for the principle of an autonomous list. This text will be submitted on October 5 to the vote of the militants, the party said.

The National Bureau also voted unanimously on the programmatic content of the European project, also put to the vote of the activists on the same day. Even if internal divisions remain in the Socialist Party over the agreement on Nupes concluded with the LFI, EELV and PCF in March 2022, the three currents in the party (First Secretary Olivier Faure, the majority and supporters of Nupes, as well as the currents of her opponents Nicolas Mayer – Rossignol and Hélène Geoffroy, hostile to Nupes) managed to agree on a strategy, working out a compromise.

“No one joined you”

A precarious compromise, as recent conversations between Olivier Faure and Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol show. “Happy that the Socialist Party has joined the line we defended yesterday: a pro-European left with a clear position on Ukraine, without an alliance of carp and rabbit,” the mayor of Rouen said this Wednesday morning on X, earlier on Twitter. A statement that immediately made Olivier Faure react: “No one has joined you,” he replied. Before adding: “We must stop betraying collective decisions by giving them our own interpretations that contradict all our debates.”

While the LFI calls for a common list of Nupes for Europeans, the non-amendable strategic text operates on the principle of a stand-alone list and indicates that PS “always believed” that its project would dictate its alliances, “rather than” the opposite.”

“Our desire for dialogue remains. But we note that the decision of environmentalists and communists to enter the European elections under their own flag did not allow us to study the conditions necessary for a common list, and in particular to re-discuss the differences, ”PS assures in a statement.

But the Socialist Party remains “fully committed to the strategy of uniting the left and ecology,” which “found its political expression during the 2022 legislative elections with the Nupe Party and its intergroup in the National Assembly,” the text continues.

“Return the Socialist Party to the Center of the Left”

Without mentioning the term “unified candidacy of the left” in the 2027 presidential election, which was abandoned by Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol and Helene Geoffroy, the text explains that it will be necessary to “create the conditions for a common program and unite the candidacies in the municipal elections.” in presidential and legislative elections, bringing the Socialist Party back to the center of the Left.”

Olivier Faure was keen to include this goal in the text so as not to “despair the voters on the left who want union”. The head of the list and the composition of the list should not be determined until the end of the year. The text also provides for the construction “around the PS of an open list” for all “recognizing themselves in the principles of their project.”