A look at Melenchon opposition group’s past five years in the National Assembly

On May 10, 2022, France’s Greens, Communist Party and Socialist Party all agreed to form a historic alliance with the far-left France Unbowed (La France Insoumise or LFI), ahead of the June legislative elections in hopes of securing a lower-house majority. Despite its small number of members currently, LFI has been very active in the National Assembly over the past five years. It has passed 100 or so bills and more than 60 motions for resolutions, tabled more than 60,000 amendments, established four commissions of enquiry and intervened thousands of times in parliament.

In June 2017, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who had been a senator in Essonne for 18 years, was the only one of the 17 LFI MPs who knew how parliament worked. In fact, his colleagues were mocked during the first few months of their terms for their lack of experience. In addition to the fact that she had been a nurse’s aide prior to being elected, some of Caroline Fiat’s opponents nicknamed her “the deputy Bac -2”, referring to her educational trainng, while Adrien Quatennens, who had previously been a customer advisor for EDF (Électricité de France S.A., a French multinational electric utility company), was given the nickname of “Deputy Call-center”.

However, the mockery quickly ceased when it became apparent that the LFI MPs were serious about positioning themselves as the opposition to Emmanuel Macron’s presidential majority during his five-year term.

“The LFI MPs have really been very active, very present and very invested in their roles, both in the committee and the Assembly, doing serious groundwork,” said Olivier Rozenberg, a professor at Sciences-Po and specialist in parliamentary life.

“Our goal was simple: to be the first opponent and the first proposer”, says Mathilde Panot, MP for Val-de-Marne and president of the LFI parliamentary group in the National Assembly. “We wanted to fight the government both by bringing the country’s various social struggles into the National Assembly while making sure, each time, to propose another vision by converting our programme into legislative proposals,” she continued. “For example, we are the only group that presented a counter-budget every year and a counter-management plan for Covid.”

“Our voice should be heard by as many people as possible”

However, it’s the stunts from LFI’s MPs that have left the biggest mark. Very early on in the legislature, LFI took advange of Palais-Bourbon’s media platform to make themselves known. Alexis Corbière, MP for Seine-Saint-Denis, pushed back against the government’s decision to reduce the personal housing allowance by €5 by presenting a shopping basket before parliament that contained €5’s worth of food. Adrien Quatennens, MP from the North, encouraged the Republic on the Move (La République en Marche, or LREM) MPs to be “insubordinate” during the revision of the Labour Code. And finally, François Ruffin, MP for the Somme, wore the shirt of an amateur football club when he talked about financing non-professional sport. All these actions created a buzz, with videos widely shared on social media.

If LFI and its newly created coalition secures a majority in parliament, no doubt more attention-grabbing actions will take place. It has pledged to introduce a €1,400 monthly minimum wage, a monthly allowance for young people, a price freeze on basic necessities, re-establish the wealth tax, repeal Macron’s flat tax on capital gains, an “ecological planning” programme to transition to a greener future and establish a Sixth Republic, an institutional revamp in which the executive’s powers would be reduced in favour of the parliament and people. LFI ran on all these proposals during France’s latest presidential election in April.

“It’s true that some of our speeches have had several million views, which was quite unprecedented in the history of the National Assembly,” says Panot. “We start from the principle that the words we speak in the Assembly are meant to be heard by the greatest number of people, so you will never hear us talk about amendment no. 6147 aimed at deleting paragraph 4 of Article 2. When Alexis Corbière took out his shopping basket, our primary goal was to bring reality back into the debates.”

“This strategy has been effective because it is talked about and remembered,” says Rozenberg. “But above all, it was also an opportunity to bring to the forefront, alongside Jean-Luc Mélenchon, new figures within LFI who otherwise would not have existed. The result after five years is therefore rather beneficial. A new generation has been trained.”

LFI MPs also took advantage of their parliamentary niches, which were granted to the opposition groups so that they could set the National Assembly’s agenda usually established by the government. This meant that bills with which the government was not comfortable could be voted on, including recognising occupational pathologies resulting from burnout, introducing receipts for identity checks, banning glyphosate, capping bank charges, extending the earned income supplement to young people aged between 18 and 25 and introducing a tax on crisis profiteers.

“All these texts were rejected, but since they were popular with the public, they used them to catch the government off guard,” says Rozenberg.

Clémentine Autain, the MP for Seine-Saint-Denis, did however manage to get a resolution passed in January 2022 that recognises endometriosis as a long-term medical condition (ALD). Two days after President Macron presented a plan dedicated to it, this subject made media headlines. It would therefore have been difficult for the presidential majority to vote against this recognition, which authorities had been demanding for several years.

“Blocking deliberations raises questions”

However, the actions of LFI MPs have also been obstructed on numerous occasions. Unable to block a bill due to their low numbers, the LFI group wrote several amendments and points of order in order to slow down the examination of certain texts.

At the beginning of 2020, the pension reform thus resulted in the rebel MPs’ tabling of 19,000 amendments. “We acknowledge our obstructionism,” said Mélenchon on BFMTV. “Because, in the same way that a trade unionist goes on strike for 43, 45, 50 days and loses salary, the MPs would be failing in their duty if they did not use every possible weapon to delay the final decision that could be imposed automatically in the Chamber.”

This has happened to such an extent that the presidential majority is worried about what will happen if a very large number of LFI MPs get elected during the legislative elections on 12 and 19 June. “LFI has adopted a chaos strategy. (…) There is a risk of permanent political guerrilla warfare regarding substance and form,” says François de Rugy, the former ‘Macronist’ president of the National Assembly, in an article published on 16 May by L’Opinion.

All the more so as the first opposition group is given – in principle – the presidency of the Finance Committee, another subject of concern for the outgoing presidential majority. “LFI could take advantage of this to investigate Bercy in order to highlight this or that problem regarding public spending or to fully inform themselves of the consequences of abolishing the ISF [solidarity tax on wealth],” says Rozenberg. “But I don’t think it will create chaos. Rather, it is an opportunity to see important things happen in the Assembly.”

“It’s true that if there are 150 or 200 of us, then that changes everything. And being in charge of the finance committee would make us even stronger opponents,” says Panot. “That being said,” she resumes, “the ‘Marcheurs’ are right to be afraid of us because we don’t want to be the first opposition group: we want the majority.”

During the last presidential election in April 2022, LFI’s platform was heavily centred on social issues and the cost of living, and Mélanchon garnered 22% of the vote, narrowly losing to Marine Le Pen, who went up against Macron in the second round.

This article has been adapted from the original in French by Mariamne Everett.