La France insoumise

History

La France Insoumise was founded on 10 February 2016, based on the belief that traditional parties and political organisations no longer serve democracy. The movement is inspired by the Spanish party Podemos, the election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour Party leader in the United Kingdom in 2015 and the candidacy of Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic Party presidential primaries in the United States. Its first meeting took place in Place Stalingrad, Paris on 5 June 2016 in the form of a march numbering about 10,000 people, according to the organisers. A second meeting took place in the gardens of the Toulouse Observatory on 28 August 2016.

The programme L'Avenir en commun (transl. A shared future) was adopted during the Lille convention, attended by just under 1,000 people in Saint-André-lez-Lille on 15/16 October 2016. Several personalities addressed the convention, including former Société Générale trader Jérôme Kerviel, LuxLeaks whistleblower Antoine Deltour, political specialist Paul Ariès, former Malian Minister of Culture Aminata Traoré, and former Speaker of the Hellenic Parliament Zoe Konstantopoulou.

At this convention, the movement also presented twenty candidates for the 2017 French legislative election, including Jean-Marie Brom, physicist, research director of the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and spokesperson of Sortir du nucléaire; Rémy Garnier, public finance inspector and whistleblower in the Cahuzac affair; Lionel Burriello, leader of the CGT union for the ArcelorMittal steel works in Florange; Mehdi Kémoune, deputy secretary-general of the CGT union for Air France; actress Sophie De La Rochefoucauld; Marie-Hélène Bourlard, trade unionist featured in the movie Merci patron!; Olivia Cattan, journalist and founder of the association SOS Autisme France; and Nathalie Seguin, trade unionist and member of the French Communist Party (PCF).

In August 2017, La France Insoumise organized its first summer university (called Les AmFIs, a play on the word amphitheater and the acronym FI for France insoumise), a tradition in France where campuses open their doors to political party gatherings and meetings between activists, elected officials, philosophers, and cultural commentators. It was set in the Marseille Saint-Charles University and comprised four days of debates, conferences and workshops. The movement also debated its future.

In the 2017 Corsican territorial election, local supporters of La France Insoumise under the banner of La Corse Insoumise allied with the PCF. The PCF-FI alliance attacked Jean-Luc Mélenchon, and the list was disavowed by Mélenchon. During the 2024 French legislative election, La France Insoumise refused the nomination of five "rebels": Frédéric Mathieu, Danielle Simonnet, Raquel Garrido, Alexis Corbière, and Hendrik Davi.

2017 presidential campaign

The 2017 presidential campaign was directed by Manuel Bompard, national secretary of the PG, its spokesperson was Alexis Corbière, former councillor of Paris and also national secretary of the PG and its coordinators were Charlotte Girard, lecturer in public law at the Paris Nanterre University and Jacques Généreux, lecturer in economy at the Paris Institute of Political Studies.

On 15 November 2016, Mélenchon held a meeting at Le Manège conference centre in Chambéry. Another similar meeting was held on 29 November at the Théâtre Femina in Bordeaux. This meeting was attended by 1,100 people, with several hundred more people outside unable to fit into the theatre. Another large meeting took place on 18 March 2017 in Place de la Bastille in Paris.

La France Insoumise was polling at 11.5% a month before the first vote. Mélenchon received 19.58% in the ballot, finishing fourth and not reaching the final round by a few hundred thousand votes; despite this, Mélenchon was the most voted candidate of the French left, eclipsing the Socialist Party candidate Benoît Hamon.

2022 presidential campaign

In November 2020, Mélenchon announced his intention to run for the 2022 presidential election. He conditioned his candidacy to a petition put online by his La France Insoumise party. After winning the threshold of 150,000 signatures, he formally became the party's candidate for the election. In the first round of voting, Mélenchon garnered 7.7 million votes, coming in third among twelve candidates with 22% of the vote, behind president Emmanuel Macron in first place with 28%, and narrowly behind Marine Le Pen with 23% of the vote.

2024 legislative elections

The far-right National Rally achieved unexpected success in the 2024 EU parliamentary election, sparking significant fear of a hard-right parliamentary majority. In June, these fears would result in the formation of the New Popular Front, a left-wing electoral alliance that included La France Insoumise as a founding member. La France Insoumise rallied in the polls after this, with the New Popular Front supporting more extensive co-operation between left-wing parties. The party achieved success in this election, winning 71 seats. The New Popular Front won 192 seats in total, constituting a plurality, with La France Insoumise contributing the largest proportion of its seats.

Ideology

Ideologically, La France Insoumise is variously described as holding democratic socialist, anti-neoliberal, eco-socialist, souverainist, left-wing populist, and soft Eurosceptic positions. On the political spectrum, the party is described as left-wing, as well as far-left. Far-left is also a label often used by its critics, including the incumbent centrist French president Emmanuel Macron and former socialist French President François Hollande.

According to political scientist Rémi Lefebvre, the programme of La France Insoumise is part of a socialism that is "very interventionist, very reformist, that believes in the essential role of public services, in ecological planning, in redistribution", and that what it questions is "more ultraliberalism than capitalism itself". According to Aurélien Dubuisson, an associate researcher at the Sciences Po Historical Centre and author of The Far Left in France published by the Blaise Pascal University Press, defining La France Insoumise as far-left is "a mistake that has been made in recent years, especially by the right wing of the political spectrum". Dubuisson cites François Mitterrand's programme from 1981, which he said would be considered "the worst extremist of the moment. But in 1981, the political context was different, it was permeated by left-wing themes." According to both Dubuisson and Lefebvre, the programme of La France Insoumise is no more radical than Mitterand's.

Candidates of the party for the June 2017 legislative elections were 60% from civil society (have never been members or elected representatives of a political party), with an average age of around 43 years. The invested candidates have signed the charter of the movement as well as the ethical charter of the independent association Anticor, committed to ethics in politics, the fight against corruption and tax noncompliance. Beginning in late 2018, Mélenchon and the leadership of La France Insoumise made a significant shift by abandoning their sovereigntist and ultra-secularist stances. This decision led to the expulsion of key members, marking a clear change in the party's ideological direction.

Islamophobia has been a controversial question on the French Left; La France Insoumise puts opposing Islamophobia high among its priorities. The party receives high numbers of votes from Muslim communities. Jean-Luc Mélenchon reportedly altered his policies to attract Muslim votes. For example, he began speaking out against Islamophobia in France, notably by participating in the "March Against Islamophobia" in 2019 and organized protests after the Bayonne mosque shooting. He became, as El Pais called him, one of the "great enemies" of satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo as well as "laïcité" (secularism in France). Mélenchon advocated that French should become a "common language" and be renamed, becoming a Creole language. He argued that French had spread to other countries as a result of colonialism and was "no longer the exclusive property of the French nation".

Political programme

The drawing up of the programme was coordinated by economist Jacques Généreux and lawyer Charlotte Girard. It drew its inspiration from L'Humain d'abord (transl. Human First), the programme of the Left Front during the 2012 French presidential election, from work carried out by the PG during its conventions on eco-socialism and summits for a "plan B in Europe", and from contributions from supporters of the movement, which the rapporteurs were asked to synthesize. At the end of the Lille Convention, a synthesis of all the proposals resulted in a programme of seven axioms and 357 measures. It was adopted by more than 90% of voters. The movement proposes "ten emblematic measures", approved during the Lille Convention, calling for four main "emergencies" to be addressed: the democratic emergency, the social emergency, the ecological emergency, and the geo-political emergency. Adopted by 77,038 votes in an Internet poll, these ten measures are:

The formation of a constituent assembly tasked with writing the constitution of a proposed French Sixth Republic to succeed the French Fifth Republic. Members of the movement consider the Fifth Republic to be a "presidential monarchy", in which too much power is concentrated in the office of the President of the Republic, with the people unable to exercise control over its actions. This constitutional process could also consider alternative forms of legislative elections, such as proportional representation. Constitutional and therefore institutional change is considered fundamental by the movement, which sees decreasing electoral turnout as a rejection by French people of their institutional system.

The repeal of the El Khomri law (labour reform passed in 2016 by the Second Valls government) which the movement believes has ended the "hierarchy of standards" in French labour law by reversing the "principle of favour" and thus failed to sufficiently protect workers.

The "democratic re-founding" of the European Union treaties including changes in monetary policy, common agricultural policy, and environmental policy. Failing this, the program envisages a "Plan B" of unilateral exit from European treaties, followed by proposing further cooperation between countries.

The implementation of an energy transition plan towards a target of 100% renewable energy in 2050, following the studies of the Association négaWatt and the public and interdepartmental agency of the environment and the control of the energy (ADEME). This transition involves shutting down France's nuclear power plants, criticised by the movement for their dependence on uranium supply, their alleged lack of safety, their radioactive waste management and their financial cost.

Alleged extremism

In October 2024, La France Insoumise said that the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF) forced people to follow the far-right Israeli government, it also accused CRIF president Yonathan Arfi of being far-right. This was a response to Arfi, for accusing the party of being "antisemitic" for its support of Palestine prior to the incident. Arfi said that some members of the party supported Hamas, such as LFI member Danièle Obono, who called Hamas a "resistance movement".

In June 2024, critics of LFI accused it of antisemitism again due to it officially rejecting to call Hamas a terrorist organization and for choosing French-Palestinian jurist Rima Hassan to be LFI's European Parliament member. She sparked controversy among the public after saying that Hamas is acting "legitimately under international law" in its conflict with Israel but "do not have the right to commit a number of abuses such as those that have been committed". A poll conducted by Institut français d'opinion publique in June of the same year found that 92% of Jewish pollers in France think that LFI is promoting antisemitism, 60% said they would leave France if the party comes to power.

The Muslim community's support for La France Insoumise sparked negative reactions among the media in France with multiple outlets accusing the party of adhering to "Islamo-leftism" and having a "communitarist" voter base. Marianne Magazine said the party is experiencing "fundamentalist entryism" from Muslim elements due to its policies appealing to them. Les Complices du mal, a book written by French-Syrian journalist Omar Youssef Souleimane and published by Plon, claimed that Islamists had "infiltrated" the party and that it contained sectarian and anti-republican factions. LFI later threatened legal action against Souleimane and Plon before the book was released on store shelves.

In February 2026, following the killing of nationalist activist Quentin Deranque in Lyon by members of the anti-fascist group Jeune Garde Antifasciste, LFI politician and co-founder of the group Raphaël Arnault faced criticism. His parliamentary assistant, Jacques-Elie Favrot, was arrested for the killing. Jean-Luc Mélenchon issued a statement, describing Arnault as "a good, hardworking MP" who "does honor" to the LFI. Mélenchon said that LFI has "associated with, and deliberately aligned" with Jeune Garde Antifasciste, describing it as a "group which, in perfect discipline, studied, worked, raised its level of collective consciousness". Mélenchon added that he condemns violence.

Organisation

Structure

Unlike a classical political party, the organisation is not fixed. Supporters' groups, small committees responsible for promoting Mélenchon's candidacy at a local level, have been established all over France and abroad.

Membership

As of 2017, LFI had a membership of 540,000.

Political support

La France Insoumise is not a coalition of political parties; however, several political parties, branches or individuals announced their support for the movement once its programme had been agreed and its candidate chosen, including the Left Party, the Socialistes Insoumis, Ensemble!, the French Communist Party, the Pole of Communist Revival in France, and some elected officials and leaders of the Europe Ecology – The Greens (EELV). These organizations are not themselves parts of the movement.

The Left Party, of which Mélenchon is a member, is the main political force involved in the movement. Several of its executives are organizing the campaign. The French Communist Party (PCF) is split on support for the movement. The party's national conference rejected a motion of support for Mélenchon by 55% on 5 November 2016, but party members voted three weeks later in favour of support, by 53.6%. Several executive members of the French Communist Party, including president Pierre Laurent and deputy Marie-George Buffet, have endorsed his candidacy.

In November 2016, Ensemble!, the third component of the Left Front coalition, also announced its support for the movement as 72% of its activists had voted in favour. They had been given the choice of three options: to support Mélenchon and work on a common framework (42% of the votes), to participate more directly in the campaign of La France Insoumise (30%) or to reject "at this stage" any support for Mélenchon (25%); however, the PCF and Ensemble! have chosen to lead "autonomous campaigns", maintaining their independence from the movement. Both parties print leaflets and posters and organize meetings without being associated with the political decisions of the campaign.

In December 2016, the Social Ecology Co-Operative, whose members include political figures from Europe Ecology – The Greens (EELV), such as EELV federal councillor Francine Bavay, and Sergio Coronado, member of the National Assembly for French residents overseas, called for the endorsement of Mélenchon's candidacy. In February 2017, Yannick Jadot (the candidate nominated by the EELV Party presidential primary) withdrew in favour of Benoît Hamon (PS) on the basis of an agreement not approved by party members. Some EELV members, including elected representatives, then endorsed La France Insoumise.

On 10 March, 27 environmentalists, including MP Sergio Coronado, activists, local officials, candidates for the June legislative elections, and members of the EELV Federal Council, announced that they would not support Hamon in the first round of the presidential election but La France Insoumise instead. They pointed to the fact that Hamon "needs a strong Socialist Party for his campaign" whereas "the hope of an environmentalist left requires instead to get rid of it", criticised François Hollande's five-year term, and suggested that the integration of political ecology into candidates' programs is "recent and inconsistent" for Hamon, while "deep and lasting" for Mélenchon.

International affiliation

The party is a member of the European Left Alliance for the People and the Planet, a European political party that supports an alternative to capitalism.

Election results

Legislative

La France Insoumise did not participate in the Senate elections until 2023 because of the election's electoral college-based system that would disfavor newly created parties with few locally elected officials. For the 2023 elections, La France Insoumise unsuccessfully attempted to organize united lists with their NUPES partners before deciding to form their own lists.