Legislative: François Hollande "challenges" the agreement between LFI and the PS

Europe 1 with AFP 5:50 p.m., May 4, 2022

The former President of the Republic François Hollande indicated this Wednesday to the regional daily

that he "rejected" the agreement between La France insoumise and the Socialist Party with a view to the legislative elections.

"I reject the agreement on the substance and even on the constituencies. But this is a question which must be decided by the national council of the PS", declared the former socialist president.

His entourage clarified that he would speak in more detail "at the beginning of next week".

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La France insoumise and the Socialist Party announced on Wednesday that they had reached an agreement for the legislative elections after agreeing on the strategy, the program and the constituencies.

Through this agreement, the PS joins the "New popular ecological and social union", of which EELV and the PCF are already members under the agreements made over the past three days.

The text must however be submitted for the internal approval of the Socialists on Thursday.

Warning against a "disappearance of the PS"

But the meeting promises to be tense in the face of the revolt of a minority current and historical figures of the party such as former Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve who threatens to leave.

François Hollande had warned Thursday, April 28 against a "disappearance" of the PS in the event of an agreement with LFI.

It would be "a questioning of the very history of socialism, of François Mitterrand and his European commitments, of Lionel Jospin and his economic credibility and his social progress", he had declared.

"I think that this agreement will not be accepted because it is precisely unacceptable", with "for the first time in the history of the left (...) the disappearance of any socialist candidacy in two thirds or three quarters of the departments", underlined François Hollande at the time.

According to the agreement, the Socialists obtain 70 constituencies, indicated the direction of the PS, without specifying how many were gainable, if it is not that the “outgoing deputies eager for the agreement were preserved”.