Strategy Debates of French Parties in the European Elections 2019

After his defeat as the socialist candidate in the 2017 Presidential election, Benoît Hamon left the French Socialist Party and founded Génération.s. With his new political party, he hoped to position himself at the centre of the fragmented French left and to embody a compromise between the Socialist Party, the French Greens and the France insoumise, but failed to achieve this goal.

During the 2019 European election, Génération.s was the French partner of the movement European Spring uniting many left parties across the EU and running on the same political manifesto promoting further European integration through an European Green New Deal, the establishment of an European constitutional assembly to foster democracy within EU institutions, an advanced plan for social reforms, a stronger solidarity between member-states, etc.. In France, Génération.s was the only party advocating a common EU seat at the UN Security Council.

Génération.s obtained only 3,3 per cent of the votes on 26 May 2019, which was above the 3 per cent threshold for campaign reimbursement but way below what its leader hoped the party would achieve. This disappointing electoral result has led Benoît Hamon to take a step back from politics for the time being.

• Génération.s is a socially progressive left-wing political movement supporting further European integration
• The political space occupied by Génération.s strongly overlaps with the political space of Europe Ecologie-Les Verts and Envie d’Europe (the Socialist Party).
• The main political issues discussed within Génération.s are the ecological transition, social justice and democratic reforms of EU and national institutions.
• Benoît Hamon may have been more successful in his attempt to unite the left if instead of leaving the Socialist Party, he would have fought to gain leadership within the party and therefore gain influence over the already existing party structure and party membership.

Génération.s is located on the very left of the socioeconomic axis and is strongly pro-EU on the EU/progressive/conservative axis. Both its voters and sympathisers are all located in the left/pro-EU quadrant, they are predominantly more moderate than the party on economic issues and as pro-EU as the party.

The founder of Génération.s is Benoît Hamon, former Socialist Party candidate in the 2017 Presidential election. During the 2017 campaign, Benoît Hamon was not fully supported by the more centrist faction of the Socialist Party. Consequently, after the Presidential election, instead of challenging the party elites for the control over the party organization, he preferred to leave and create its own political movement that is more left wing than the moderate social democrats.

This strategy proved to be unsuccessful, as the left wing of the French political spectrum is already occupied by La France insoumise (LFI) since several years. The LFI leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon also left the Socialist Party in 2008, creating a new political movement. And, on the left side of the political spectrum, both the Europe Ecologie-Les Verts and the Socialist Party already have pro-EU positions, resulting in a difficult task for Génération.s to distinguish itself on this issue. It did so by proposing to have a EU seat at the UN Security Council, which no other party supported.

Following the 2017 Presidential election, the Rassemblement National (RN) has shifted its political strategy towards the EU. While in 2017, it supported dropping the Euro currency and de facto a Frexit; it has abandoned this position since. Two factors have led to this strategic shift. First, the strong support the common European currency enjoys in French public opinion and second, the ability of other nationalist and populist parties across Europe (Hungary, Italy and Austria) to win elections without campaigning for an exit from the EU.

The RN has always struggled to find allies within the national party system; therefore, one key element of its strategy in these last months has been to show its ties with other European right-wing parties as means of fostering its image as a credible political actor.

Nationally, the RN campaign was led by the 23 years old Jordan Bardella and focused on a strong rhetoric against the current government denouncing “globalist elites”. This rhetoric resonated well with the anti-government Yellow Vests protests that erupted in November 2018 against the government’s right-wing economic policies and, broadly speaking, against the elites.

The polarization of the political debate between “globalists”, i.e. the list Renaissance, and the “nationalists”, i.e. the list RN, led to the victory of the latter, which obtained 23,3 per cent of the votes on 26 May 2019.

• The RN is the most anti-EU among the major political parties in France. Economically, it is located in the centre of the left-right dimension as on some issues (social welfare, pension, etc.) it has adopted left leaning positions, and on other issues (tax cuts for companies, etc.) it has adopted right leaning positions. The party has also adopted a strict anti-immigration agenda and puts strong emphasis on law and order issues.
• In recent years the most discussed issues within the RN have been the Euro and the UE, immigration, and the denunciation of globalized economics.
• The victory of the RN can be explained by a favorable national political context of anti-Macron sentiments. Hence, voters who wished to cast a protest vote voted for RN, as this was he party with the highest chance to win over the governmental party list. In addition, its political message was clear, as to vote for the RN meant to vote against the government.

The Rassemblement National (RN) is located on the centre of the left-right socioeconomic axis, due to its mixture of right wing (e.g. tax cuts for businesses) and left wing (e.g. increasing the number of civil servants) positions on economic issues. On the EU dimension, RN is strongly anti-EU, considering that EU membership is overall negative for France and that it undermines French sovereignty. On average, RN voters are located on the same position than the party on the left-right axis, with the majority of them being anti-EU. Its sympathisers are mostly located on the right side on the socio-economic dimension and are also largely Eurosceptic, yet not as much as the party.

Strategically, these positions imply that the RN has made the right decision to drop its position to leave the Euro currency after the 2017 Presidential election, given that its electorate and its sympathisers are less Eurosceptic than the party. Moreover, the concentration of RN sympathisers is on the right side of the socioeconomic dimension, showing that the potential for vote growth is located on the right, in particular among the conservative electorate of Les Républicains. As a matter of fact, since the European elections, RN has repeatedly called for conservatives to join their party.

Historically, the French Greens have always identified themselves with the left. But during the 2019 European election campaign, under the impulsion of the leader of the party, Yannick Jadot, Europea Ecologie-Les Verts (EELV) made a strategic shift toward a more centrist stance. As it can be seen on the French political landscape, this shift was not a policy shift: EELV is still a pro-EU political party situated on the left of the political spectrum, prioritizing environmental issues over other types of issues, and advocating for an ecological transition led first by the State and second one, led by private actors. This strategic shift has rather been rhetorical, as Jadot refused to identify the party with the “left” in campaign speeches and interviews and adopting a rather pragmatic rhetoric instead of an ideological one.

This strategic shift proved to be successful, as EELV ranked third with 13,5 per cent of the votes attracting young voters in particular, but also former voters of Emmanuel Macron disappointed by the poor track record of the French president on environmental issues. Despite the fact that most major parties have now incorporated environmental issues in their manifesto, EELV is the party with the greatest track record and credibility on these issues, which clearly helped them in an election where the environmental frame was at play.

Since performing well electorally on 26 May 2019, EELV claims to represent a third pole in French politics, an alternative to the “globalists” of Renaissance and to the “nationalists” of the Rassemblement National. This claim is likely to generate further conflict between EELV and the other left parties, from the Socialist Party to France Insoumise.

• EELV is a socially progressive and left political movement supporting further European integration
• The political space occupied by EELV strongly overlaps with the political space of Génération.s and Envie d’Europe (the Socialist Party), and partly overlap with the political space of Renaissance’s voters.
• The main political issues discussed within EELV are the ecological transition, democratic reforms of the EU and the role of the State in environmental regulations. Recently the strategic positioning of the party, either as a left-wing party or as a centre to the left, has been the topic of internal discussion.
• The success of EELV in these 2019 European election can be explained by the increasing importance of environmental issues in the French public debate, the clarity of the campaign message of EELV “Voting for EELV is to vote for the environment”, and the poor track record of the current government on environmental issues.

Europe Ecologie-Les Verts (EELV) is located on the left side on the economic axis and is strongly pro-EU on the EU/progressive/conservative axis. Both its voters and its sympathisers are as pro-EU as the party, yet they are more economically moderate. EELV voters are clearly leaning to the left, but a substantial share of the EELV sympathisers are located on the centre of the socioeconomic dimension and for some leaning toward the centre-right.

These positions explain why the party strategy in these European elections was successful. In its rhetoric, EELV has detached itself from the ideological weight of the term “left” and has adopted a more ideologically neutral stance on environmental issues, arguing than ecology was for all. This strategy is currently creating some tensions with the other French left parties (in particular La France insoumise and Génération.s), as historically political ecology in France has developed on the left of the political spectrum. Thus, these left parties have since several years fully incorporated environmental policies in their manifestos.

Through this strategy, EELV has successfully attracted the youth, which is less ideological than older voters, and Emmanuel Macron’s voters who were disappointed in the government’s environmental track record. As a response, the government has announced new environmental measures since the European elections.

Led by the intellectual Raphaël Gluksmann, envie d’Europe was a list that brought together the newly created civil society movement Place Publique, the Socialist Party and the left party Nouvelle Donne. When created in November 2018, Place Publique attempted to bring together all the left and centre- left parties in order to avoid the fragmentation of the left at the EU elections. However, Raphaël Gluksmann, who had no previous political experience, could not convince the leaders of other parties to join forces. Only the Socialist Party, struggling to find a candidate as number one of its list accepted to collaborate. In return, the Socialist Party provided its already established party structure and membership for the campaign to a very young and yet unstructured political movement as Place Publique.

Envie d’Europe obtained 6,2 per cent of the votes in the 2019 European election. This score was considered as neither a success nor a defeat as the list attracted the same number of voters than the far-left France Insoumise (6,3 per cent) which was 14 points ahead of the Socialist Party in the 2017 Presidential election.

• Envie d’Europe is a socially progressive and left political movement supporting further European integration
• The political space occupied by Envie d’Europe strongly overlaps with the political space of Génération.s and Europe Ecologie-Les Verts, and partly overlap with the political space of Renaissance’s voters.
• The main political issues discussed within Envie d’Europe are the advocacy of greater solidarity within the EU, the ecological transition and a more welcoming immigration policy, in particular toward refugees.
• Raphaël Gluksmann failed to unite all the left parties due to a lack of political legitimacy and by coming into the picture without strong public opinion support late in the electoral calendar (fall of 2018).

Led by the intellectual Raphaël Gluksmann, envie d’Europe was a party list that brought together the newly created civil society movement Place Publique, the Socialist Party and the left party Nouvelle Donne. Envie d’Europe is located on the left of the socioeconomic dimension and is pro-EU on the European dimension. On average, its voters are located very close to the party positions on both dimensions. The same is the case for its sympathisers who are slightly more pro-EU than the party list.

According to its position on the political landscape, the party list has the potential for being the median party among the many left parties in French politics. However, the public disapproval of the François Hollande’s mandate from 2012 to 2017, and the electoral collapse of the Socialist Party in the 2017 elections (both presidential and parliamentary) represent scars that have not healed yet. The Socialist Party is attempting to renew itself but is torn between a critical stance toward the government and the fact that many of its former voters did vote for Emmanuel Macron and La République en Marche in the 2017 elections. Hence, it cannot criticize its former voters too vocally if it aims at reconquering them. In a time of strong polarization of the French party system, moderate criticism is a difficult position to hold if one wishes to be heard by the media and by voters.

According to polls, during the first year and a half of Emmanuel Macron’s presidency, La Franceinsoumise (LFI) has been the party that best represented the opposition to the government. However, since the fall of 2018, the party is undergoing a tumultuous period due to 3 factors. First, the image of its leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, took a hit in November 2018 after a controversial police search in the central party office. Second, the Yellow Vests protest that erupted in November 2018 had not been foreseen by LFI and had always refused to be channelled through political parties such as LFI. And third, at regular intervals, the media are revealing the internal divisions within LFI, stressing the lack of internal democracy.

In this context, the young (28 years old) and former NGO activist, Manon Aubry, struggled to create the same enthusiasm that had characterized the 2017 Presidential campaign of Jean-Luc Mélenchon. This attempt failed, as LFI obtained only 6,3 per cent of the votes in the 2019 European elections. Given this disappointing outcome, the internal debate regarding the political strategy of the party is fierce: should the party pursue a populist strategy, considered by its critics as the cause of the defeat, or a more traditional left-wing strategy?

• LFI is a socially progressive and left-wing political movement adopting a very critical stance toward the European Union.
• The political space occupied by LFI strongly overlaps with the other three left and socially progressive parties: Envie d’Europe, Génération.s and Europe Ecologie-Les Verts.
• The main political issues discussed within LFI are the ecological transition, the necessary modification of EU treaties for social and ecological reforms, and what political strategy to adopt, with proponents of a populist strategy and a left-wing strategy.
• The failure of LFI to repeat its successful 2017 Presidential campaign lies in 3 factors. First, the traditionally low turnout of EU elections compared to Presidential elections (50 per cent vs. 78 per cent), as in 2017 the LFI candidate had strongly mobilized the younger generations that traditionally vote less in second-order elections. Second, the lack of clarity of the political message of LFI in the context of the EU elections: neither fully pro-EU nor fully anti-EU, the critical stance of LFI struggled to be heard and understood by the electorate. Third, the increasingly negative image of the party leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

La France insoumise (LFI) is located on the very left of the economic dimension supporting greater wealth redistribution, labour protection and state intervention in the economy in particular regarding ecological transition. With regard to the European (the socially conservative/socially progressive) dimension, LFI adopts a critical stance, arguing that EU membership undermines French sovereignty and that France should establish a balance of power with EU institutions in order to shift EU policies toward more social and environmental goals.

LFI voters are economically on the left, close to LFI’s positions, but are, in majority, pro-EU. LFI sympathisers are also left wing but more moderate than the party and are even more pro-EU than the party’s voters.

This gap between the party positions and its sympathisers on EU integration reveals how unlikely it was for LFI to perform well in a European election. Moreover, its EU-critical position was hard, if not impossible, to be synthetized in a short and efficient political message.

Strategically, these graphs reveal that the potential for electoral expansion of LFI is clearly located on the left-progressive quadrant of the political space. After the party’s disappointing result in the 2019 European election, democratization the party structure and the empowerment of its members may be a path to remobilize its electoral base.

The party list Renaissance represented the governmental coalition between Emmanuel Macron’s La République en Marche (LRM), the centrist party MoDem and the centre right Agir. The European election has a peculiar meaning for LRM as research on LRM members has shown that what mostly brought them together when the party was created in 2016 was their support for Emmanuel Macron and his pro-EU stance.

Since Emmanuel Macron became a prominent actor in French politics, he has regularly emphasised his love and ambition for the European project. In particular, he advocated the establishment of a European superpower that would matter in the global economy and be able to protect its citizens from geopolitical conflicts and economic tensions. However, since the beginning of the Yellow Vests protest the government has struggled to push forward its own pro-EU electoral agenda.

Moreover, the government track record, including tougher immigration reforms, timid environmental reforms and restrictions of the right to demonstrate, has pushed more progressive voters away, who voted for the Greens or for the Socialist Party instead, but has attracted new conservative-leaning voters, in particular among the elderly. Even if LRM is still a young political party, its median position on the French political landscape, between the traditional left and the traditional right, continues to attract an important part of the electorate.

• Renaissance is a pro-EU political party with a liberal view on economic governance (market deregulation, privatization, etc.), a liberal view on cultural matters such as minority rights (LGBT rights) and a conservative view on law and order issues (immigration, protrest demonstrations, etc.)
• The political space occupied by Renaissance strongly overlaps with the political space of the conservatives Les Républicains, but also overlaps with the political space of left parties: Envie d’Europe, Génération.s and Europe Ecologie-Les Verts.
• Renaissance attempts to brand all its policies as being “progressive”; this notion of progress is the most mentioned when policy issues are discussed.
• The failure of Renaissance to win over Rassemblement National in the 2019 European election lies in the strong anti-Macron sentiment that has fuelled French politics in the months prior to the election. But its success to obtain more than 22 per cent of the vote lies in its capacity to have attracted pro-European conservative voters among the elderly. Part of the success is also due to a clear political message as voting for Renaissance is a vote for the most pro-EU party.

The party list Renaissance represented the governmental coalition between Emmanuel Macron’s La République en Marche (LRM), the centrist party MoDem and the center-to-the-right Agir. In the political landscape, the party list is located on the right side on the socio-economic dimension, as these parties have put forward an economic program based on labor market flexibilization, privatizations, and tax cuts for companies and the wealthiest. On the pro- anti-EU/ socially conservative/socially progressive dimension, Renaissance was the party list most favourable to additional European integration.

The majority of its voters are located on the centre-right of the socio-economic dimension but are more centrist than the party list, while its sympathisers are exactly on the center of this dimension with a substantial share of them located on the centre-left. Both voters and sympathisers are very pro-EU.

This gap between the party list and its voters and sympathisers is due to the strategy followed by Emmanuel Macron’s party since the 2017 elections. Whereas in 2017, he mostly attracted voters from the centre-left draining the voter base of the Socialist Party, LRM has since then pursued a pro-market economic agenda and a conservative agenda on issues such as immigration and law and order in order to drain the electoral basis of Les Républicains, namely the elderly.

Party sympathisers that are leaning to the centre-left have likely voted for the Greens, deeming the governmental environmental measures as disappointing so far.

Les Républicains (LR, formerly called UMP), the main French conservative party, was established in 2002 as an attempt to bring the forces of the right and centre-right under the same umbrella. The emergence of Emmanuel Macron’s La République en Marche as a centrist party has directly challenged LR’s political strategy. Moreover, since La République en Marche comfortably won the 2017 parliamentary elections, it shifted its position further to the right hence impinging on LR’s political space.

In order to distinguish themselves, and in accordance with their more radicalized membership base, LR has moved further to the right on issues such as immigration, national identity, law and order, and the European Union. Under the leadership of Laurent Wauquiez, LR has recently adopted a more critical stance toward the EU, arguing that member-states should preserve their sovereignty in areas such as defines, boarder controls etc., and that the EU should be delegated additional power in specific policy areas only if it can be more efficient than national states in these areas.

However, sandwiched between the pro-EU La République en Marche and the anti-EU Rassemblement National, LR’s new critical stance failed to resonate with and to be understood by the electorate, resulting in the lowest electoral score ever for the party - 8,5 per cent of the vote. In the weeks following the European elections, several centrist politicians left the party which led to a deepening the party crisis and to the resignation of Laurent Wauquiez as party leader.

• LRis the French party with the most liberal and right wing economic outlook ( in favour of market deregulation, increase of retirement age, etc.), a conservative view on societal issues (immigration, law and order, environment, LGBT rights, etc.) and with a critical stance on the EU opposing a priori further European integration.
• Half of the political space occupied by LRis shared with Renaissance and another third is shared with the Rassemblement National.
• In recent years, the most discussed issues within LR have been national identity issues and whether to strongly oppose Emmanuel Macron’s governmental coalition or to support it from time to time, since many reforms that have been implemented by the government are in line with the goals of LR.
• The failure of LR in these elections can be explained by the lack of coherence and clarity of the party strategy, both regarding La République en Marche and Rassemblement National, and the shift toward a more critical stance on EU issues. Whether staying in line with their membership, both these factors have created a gap with the electorate.

Les Républicains (LR) is the most economically right-wing party in France and has, in the last years, become increasingly critical of the EU as shown by its location on the vertical axis. The party’s voters are also positioned on the right of the socio-economic axis, although they are not as radical as LR. On the European dimension, LR’s voters are not as EU-critical as the party, as the majority of them are in favour of further European integration. Party sympathisers are even more pro-EU and more centrist on the left-right economic dimension than party voters and the party.

The conciliation of economic right wing and EU-critical positions has led to the worst electoral score of LR ever. The most economically liberal section of the French electorate tend to be also rather pro-EU and nowadays this political space (economically liberal and pro-EU) is occupied by the governmental coalition Renaissance. And voters who are more critical of the EU or even anti-EU tend to be more moderate economically, in particular with regard to social welfare - the Eurosceptic party Rassemblement National already occupies this political space (economically moderate and anti-EU) since several years.

As a result of this positioning, many pro-EU voters among the LR electorate (e.g. the elderly) have voted for Renaissance in this election, while anti-EU voters among the LR electorate (e.g. the working class) have voted for the Rassemblement National.