La France Insoumise
La France Insoumise (FI or LFI: La France Insoumise; pronounced [la fʁɑ̃s ɛ̃sumiz], lit. 'France Unbowed')[a] is a left-wing to far-left political party in France.[12] It was launched in 2016 by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, then a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) and former co-president of the Left Party (PG). It aims to implement the eco-socialist and democratic socialist programme L'Avenir en commun (transl. A Shared Future).
France Unbowed La France Insoumise
FI, LFI
10 February 2016
L'Insoumission Hebdo
540,000[1]
- New Popular Front
(2024–present) - New Ecological and Social People's Union
(2022–2024)
Party of the European Left (observer)
Now the People
- Purple (official)
- Red (customary)
The party nominated Mélenchon as its candidate for the presidential election of 2017. He came fourth in the first round, receiving 19.6% of the vote and failing to qualify for the second round by around 2%. After the legislative election of 2017, La France Insoumise formed a parliamentary group of 17 members of the National Assembly, with Mélenchon as the group's president. In the 2019 European Parliament election, it however won only six seats, below its expectations.
In 2022, Mélenchon again became the party's candidate for president, and later Christiane Taubira, winner of the People's Primary, endorsed Mélenchon. In the first round of 2022 French presidential election voting in April, Mélenchon came third, garnering 7.7 million votes, narrowly behind second-place finisher Marine Le Pen.
The party uses the lower case Greek letter phi as its logotype.
The drawing up of the programme was coordinated by economist Jacques Généreux and lawyer Charlotte Girard.[25][26] It drew its inspiration from L'Humain d'abord (English: "Human First"), the programme of the Left Front during the 2012 presidential election, from work carried out by the PG during its conventions on eco-socialism and summits for a "plan B in Europe", and from contributions from supporters of the movement,[25] which the rapporteurs were asked to synthesize.
At the end of the Lille Convention, a synthesis of all the proposals resulted in a programme of seven axioms and 357 measures. It was adopted by more than 90% of voters.[19]
The movement proposes "ten emblematic measures", approved during the Lille Convention, calling for four main "emergencies" to be addressed: the democratic emergency, the social emergency, the ecological emergency and the geo-political emergency.[27][19] Adopted by 77,038 votes in an Internet poll, these ten measures are:[19]
Other proposals include withdrawing from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to avoid French involvement in wars waged by the United States and thus only to act within the framework of the United Nations (UN); reinforcing the 35-hour work-week and moving towards 32 hours; and reducing the retirement age to 60.[19][28]
This programme, named L'Avenir en commun (English: "A Shared Future"), was published by the Éditions du Seuil on 1 December 2016. It is based around seven axioms: a Sixth Republic; distribution of wealth; environmental planning; withdrawal from European treaties; peace and independence; human progress; and "on the borders of humanity" (ocean,[30] space and digital). The book rapidly entered the top 10 best-seller list by 9 December, with 110,000 copies printed.[31] It was the subject of an adaptation in digital comic strip, broadcast on the Internet.[32][33] Thematic booklets, deepening the proposals of the movement, have been published as the campaign progressed.
Candidates for the June 2017 legislative elections are 60% from civil society (have never been members or elected representatives of a political party), with an average age of around 43 years. The invested candidates have signed the charter of the movement[34] as well as the ethical charter of the independent association Anticor, committed to ethics in politics, the fight against corruption and tax noncompliance.[35] The 2022, L'Avenir en commun programme for the Popular Union includes a number of proposals, such as finding an alternative to capitalism.[36]
Presidential campaign of 2017[edit]
The campaign was directed by Manuel Bompard, national secretary of the PG, its spokesperson was Alexis Corbière, former councillor of Paris and also national secretary of the PG and its coordinators were Charlotte Girard, lecturer in public law at the Paris Nanterre University and Jacques Généreux, lecturer in economy at the Paris Institute of Political Studies.[39]
On 15 November 2016, Jean-Luc Mélenchon held a meeting at Le Manège conference centre in Chambéry. Another similar meeting was held on 29 November at the Théâtre Femina in Bordeaux. This meeting was attended by 1,100 people, with several hundred more people outside unable to fit into the theatre.[40] Another large meeting took place on 18 March 2017 in Place de la Bastille in Paris.[41] Three of their four last meetings in Marseille, Lille and Toulouse were attended by around 100,000 people.
La France Insoumise was polling at 11.5% a month before the first vote,[42] but Mélenchon received 19.58% in the ballot, finishing fourth and not reaching the final round.