At the Palais du Pharo, the atmosphere is very different from the 2018 congress, when the party was divided, with the rare overthrow of its outgoing national secretary Pierre Laurent by Fabien Roussel.

The latter brought the score of his orientation text to 82% in January, and therefore does not suffer any challenge to keep the head of the party on Monday.

Sébastien Lannoy, 43, from Lens (Pas-de-Calais) returned to the PCF during the presidential election after young militant years, galvanized by the candidacy of Fabien Roussel (2.3%) and still seduced by his positioning within the left-wing coalition Nupes.

"It brings hope and gives the collective desire to fight," he said. "He speaks the truth, in words that everyone can understand."

At his side, Giselle Gori, 60, from Boulogne-sur-Mer (Pas-de-Calais), also praises the "clear and accessible speech, which does not fly in the high spheres".

PCF First Secretary Fabien Roussel in front of activists at the party congress in Marseille on April 7, 2023 © Nicolas TUCAT / AFP

But according to her, the Communists also appreciate that the deputy of the North defends them against "the hegemonic wills of La France insoumise": "Roussel is the bearer of the general opinion: one does not have to submit to any diktat".

The communists had a lot after a 2017 campaign where they paid lip service to Jean-Luc Mélenchon and felt humiliated.

"There are resentments that have not yet passed," said Maxence Mendes da Silva, head of the Young Communists in Indre-et-Loire.

In camera

Fabien Roussel, he relishes: "The presidential campaign has done us a lot of good, we straighten our heads, we no longer look at our pumps!"

"It's the communist pride," smiled Emmanuel Maurel, leader of the small GRS (Republican and Socialist Left) party, invited to the congress. "Roussel responds to something deep in the base, for example in Auvergne, Marseille, Nord-Pas-de-Calais: the synthesis between the class struggle and a social republic," compatible with the center-left.

MP Stéphane Peu, signatory of the motion defeated in January, walks his spleen on the terrace of the Palais du Pharo, with the Old Port visible below. "I am silent and sad, I watch all this a little puzzled."

He strives to be a good player but criticizes the form. Unlike the 2018 convention hall, where the stands of the 700 delegates framed on all four sides of the stage, "we are not in a convention hall but in a theater, we are there to applaud and listen, there are no tables" to work.

PCF First Secretary Fabien Roussel in front of activists at the party congress in Marseille on April 7, 2023 © Nicolas TUCAT / AFP

"The risk is to transform the PCF into a fan club organized around a person and turned towards an election, the presidential, while the PCF is historically opposed to the personalization of the Fifth Republic," worries the deputy of Seine-Saint-Denis.

The closed session finally chosen for the work Sunday afternoon on the statutes of the party, and in particular on the possible strengthening of sanctions against those who deviate from the official line, add to the fears of opponents.

But "the fascination is marginal," says Maxence Mendes da Silva, for whom criticism is regularly leveled at Fabien Roussel, even from his supporters. He, for example, regrets that there is not "more coordination to avoid small polemical sentences", because "then we have to explain to people what is behind certain words" of their leader.

The work of amendment on the common basis also shows that the party remains crossed by various sensitivities. Thus, a congressman denounced at the microphone one of the blind spots of Fabien Roussel's words: "The mention of working-class neighborhoods appears only twice in the text, once about abstention, the other about drug trafficking."

© 2023 AFP