On Wednesday 27 June, three new political forces from within the Scandinavian ark of the radical left: the Finnish Left Alliance the Danish Red-Green Alliance and the Swedish Left Party joined the “Now, The People!” movement set up in Lisbon last April.
These three groups have therefore joined the forces of the founding radical left, namely, La France insoumise, the Spanish Podemos movement and the Portuguese Bloco de Esquerda Party (see EUROPE 12001).
During a press conference organised at the European Parliament, Younous Omarjee (GUE/NGL, France) was pleased to announce that “In Lisbon, we had the feeling that we were experiencing an historic moment and I now have the feeling of living through an historic moment in the history of progressive parties and movements in Europe".
Jean-Luc Melenchon, the former candidate for the 2017 French presidential elections made an illusion to the polarisation in European political life between liberals on the one hand, and the far right, on the other, “We are presenting ourselves as an alternative to this new order currently constructing itself in Europe”.
Mr Mélenchon outlined three axes forming the coalition: the fight against the primacy of economic performance over social questions; a clear break with the “the ideology of war”, in a reference to the new priorities set out by the Union in the defence domain (see EUROPE 12048, 12040) and its alignment with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO); - the management of migration waves by tackling the root causes, which according to this French politician, are wars, “unbalanced” European free trade agreements and climate change.
It should be pointed out that the explicit mention of a Plan B, namely, leaving the European treaties in the event of a breakdown in the renegotiations of the European treaties, an important factor in the French presidential campaign of Jean-Luc Melenchon, is not included in the manifesto.
Questioned by EUROPE about the political forces targeted by the movement, Mr Mélenchon preferred to kick the issue into touch and explained that “pragmatism” was the watch-word. One source confirmed to us that talks with Die Linke were ongoing but that the German party still needed to resolve a number of internal contradictions, particularly with regard to the hard-line on migrants advocated by Sahra Wagenknecht.
With regard to a possible alliance with the initiative by Benoît Hamon from France and Yanis Varoufakis from Greece, Mr Melenchon said that he was observing this initiative with “goodheartedness” whilst waiting to see what would happen. Catarina Martins, from the Bloco de Esquerda added that the coalition was open to all progressive forces and insisted “We are not nationalists, we are internationalists”.
Referendum on Macron
Mr Mélenchon also said that he was expecting a European election that would be “very hard on the European theme” due to the frustration expressed. In the French case, Mr Melenchon said that the vote would mean “a referendum on the policies of the French President, Particularly European policy, which will have taken less than a year to shatter”. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)