Socialist agony in France

The agreement reached by the Socialist Party and France Insumisa, the formation led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, for the June legislative elections breaks the clearly Europeanist tradition of French socialism and opens the gap of a national-populism that had barely been among its elements of identity.

Without incurring in the literalness of Mélenchon's program for the presidential elections in April, which spoke of "arranged rupture" and "confrontation" with the treaties of the European Union, the pact reduces the verbal forcefulness, but does not dilute the ultimate intention.

The socialists assume a shared program that "will necessarily lead to tensions, to confirm contradictions", but go so far as to affirm: "It will be necessary to overcome these blockages and be willing to not respect certain rules while we work to transform them".

The pact encourages disobeying European laws when they prevent the execution of their national policies, if they govern.

It simply means the prevalence of French national legislation over European legislation in terms of economic and social rules or agrarian policy.

The agreement is an earthquake for the French Social Democratic family, stressed and divided by this pact given its historical Europeanist vocation.

It supposes the renunciation of acting as a containment dam for sovereignist impulses and the adoption of the disintegrating positions that countries with illiberal regimes such as Hungary and Poland have exhibited.

The agonizing situation of the Socialist Party – it barely obtained 1.7% of the votes in the first round of the presidential elections in April, compared to 21.9% for Francia Insumisa – has led it to a risky subordination to the eurosceptic leadership of Mélenchon.

In the background there is a conjunctural political calculation: in the distribution of candidates, the Socialists would correspond to a sad 70, 100 to the environmentalists and 50 to the Communists of a total of 577 constituencies (the rest, 357, are for France Insoumise).

The primary objective of this operation is pragmatic: it aims to maintain the current parliamentary group of 30 deputies (the minimum is 15).

Only 5 of the 13 French regions, and some of the country's main cities, are today governed by the Socialists.

Mélenchon does not govern in any of them and it is precisely the territorial implantation that is the main lack of the rebellious.

But the great result obtained by Mélenchon in the April presidential elections has been the origin of his legitimacy to propose a joint candidacy of the left and try to optimize the results of all of them.

The agreement has also been signed by the Greens and the Communist Party, and the incorporation of the socialists carries the political symbolism that implies the renunciation in Europe of establishing itself as a political alternative to the forces that seek to undermine the internal cohesion of the EU.

The free fall in which the French Socialist Party finds itself forces it to an analysis that cannot be content with citing external causes for its current debacle.

The crack that this pact opens in the European social democratic family irresponsibly pushes the ship of euroscepticism and sovereignist adventures in a context of political turmoil on a planetary scale.

It may be the last desperate resort of the survival instinct.