No definitive decision was made by the Party of the European Left (EL) on the question of whether to present a Spitzenkandidat in May 2019, at its general assembly in Brussels on Sunday 30 September. A final decision has been postponed until the meeting of the executive board on 26 and 27 January 2019.
“First of all, a sufficiently well-known figure needs to emerge”, an EL source explained on Monday 1 October, stressing that it would be hard to find a candidate able to gather consensus as well as the Greek Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras, who was the lead candidate in 2014 before losing popularity among the European Left since then. If one name receives the approval of all parties, then the decision to put forward a Spitzenkandidat can be confirmed.
In order to do this, the EL has decided to open the race to individuals who are not party members. “This could be somebody from civil society, or an artist”, our source explained.
The call for applications will also be open to other trans-European movements of progressive forces, such as the Now, the People! movement, which comprises La France insoumise, Podemos and Bloco de Esquerda, and several left-wing Scandinavian parties (see EUROPE 12050). “The aim is to bring together the Left”, our source stressed.
Proposals for names may be submitted until 16 November. Of the names currently doing the rounds, that of Germany's Gregor Gysi, current chair of the EDL, is repeated most frequently, although he does not have the full approval of all ranks of the European party. An initial filtering is expected to be carried out at the meeting of the political secretariat on 1 December.
Manifesto. The EL members agreed to take the Election Platform, the draft EL manifesto for the European elections of May 2019, as their basis (see EUROPE 12105). The deadline for amendments to be tabled has also been set at 16 November.
Bernie Sanders. The general assembly of the European party also approved the decision to participate in the call launched by American Senator Bernie Sanders on 13 September in the British daily newspaper The Guardian, to bring together all of the world's progressive forces in order to fight the “new authoritarian axis”. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)