Results of France insoumise to Europeans: LFI suffers the battle of the left in the polls

The rebels cling to the hope of shaping a strong left-wing Europe. But forced to go it alone for the 2024 European elections, the party is struggling to make an impact on voting intentions.

A few weeks before the European elections, LFI is no longer able to climb in the polls. The La France Insoumise list renewed by MEP Manon Aubry finds itself with 6 to 8% voting intentions, in a fight with the EELV list of Marie Toussaint and the LR list of François-Xavier Bellamy. The party, which was the first of the left during the last presidential elections - is included in the Nupes union in 2022 - has left its place to the Place Publique-PS party led by Raphaël Glucksmann, which is for now in third position after RN and Renaissance. LFI suffers from its position on the situation in Gaza and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which has resulted in its executives being at the heart of several controversies and summoned as part of an investigation for "apology of terrorism" in the middle of the electoral campaign. It also perhaps suffers from the end of the “useful vote” on which the party is surfing in 2022, facing Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron.

Engaged with La France Insoumise since 2019, Manon Aubry was reappointed as head of the list for the 2024 Europeans. After Sciences Po, the graduate in political science and business and international relations worked for eight years for different NGOs, then joined her mother in the ranks of LFI. Manon Aubry quickly became a figure in the party founded by Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

The left-wing activist is the only French woman to sit on the council of presidents of the European Parliament. In the European hemicycle, she also takes a position against tax evasion in Europe, feminicides and is at the initiative of a proposal for a European directive on the European duty of vigilance, a text “aimed at condemning multinationals violating human rights and destroying the environment in their production chain." For the next election, she had launched an appeal to socialists, communists and ecologists for the creation of a common list in line with the Nupes, but it was not heard by the three other groups of the French left .

The LFI program is structured into nine chapters around mainly social issues: agricultural policy, aid to migrants and even job creation. The left party wants to continue its work begun at the national level and prepare Europe for "after Macron" by leading "concrete fights against their system", they explain on their campaign website.

To achieve this, Manon Aubry and her colleagues want to get Europe out of austerity and review the sharing of wealth by launching a European public investment plan to fight poverty and serve ecology. This plan will, according to them, put an end to social dumping, a practice which aims to reduce the social rights of workers to increase the competitiveness of a company. Like certain other parties, LFI intends to exit free trade agreements and relocate businesses to Europe, to create jobs. To serve ecology, they wish to "fully implement the Green Deal" and gradually strengthen it to fight against global warming, notably through an overhaul of agricultural policy deemed polluting and aggressive. The rebels want to attack modes of production, consumption and exchange as well as lobbies.

The rebellious list also plans to tackle the rollback of certain rights (abortions, LGBTI) in Europe to guarantee each European citizen the same fundamental rights. On migration issues, LFI wishes to guarantee the right to asylum on European soil. The rebels also position themselves regarding the situation in Gaza and want to put a stop to the export of arms and cooperation agreements with certain states at war.

The LFI list is now complete. It contains 81 names, one for each seat in the European Parliament reserved for French elected officials. This does not mean that all of the names on the list will sit in parliament. If we rely on the polls, there should not be more than 10 elected representatives from the LFI party in Strasbourg at the end of the election; there are 6 of them who have been there since 2019.