Podemos, Insoumise France, the Portuguese Bloco and other left-wing formations have launched a new party at European level under the name of “Alliance of the European Left for the People and the Planet”, which is awaiting processing with the Authority of European Parties and Foundations, in which it was registered on 29 August.
The alliance that these forces have been establishing for years aims to become a new organization that marks the distances with the forces of the more traditional and communist left united in the Party of the European Left, which includes Izquierda Unida and the PCE of Spain, and Syriza or Die Linke, among others. However, they will coexist under the aegis of the left group (The Left GUE/NGL) in the European Parliament.
The process was led by La France Insoumise, Podemos and Bloco, which was also joined by the Nordics of the Finnish Left Alliance, the Swedish Left Party, the Danes of Enhedlisten and the Poles of Razem, who are the only ones represented in Poland. To form a European party, seven national parties are needed, represented in the European Parliament or in the countries of origin.
The board is composed of Sweden’s Malin Björk and Portugal’s Catarina Martins as co-presidents; France’s Sophie Rauszer as secretary general; Poland’s Zofia Malisz as treasurer and Isa Serra as administrator, according to Politico.
The birth of the party deepens the break with the Party of the European Left, of which until now the Danes of Enhedlisten were part, who were very critical of the drift of TARTE, and with which the rest of the components, such as France Insoumise, which presented itself as an observer. The separation was already palpable during the European election campaign when they launched a specific platform and signed a joint declaration. Even during the formation of the parliamentary groups in the European Parliament, the differences were evident, even if in the end the left group brought together all the formations with a total of 46 MEPs. From now on, 18 of them will also be represented in the “Alliance of the European Left for the People and the Planet”.
“The broadest possible unity of struggle and popular mobilisations throughout the European Union is necessary. The European Green Left must be strengthened and organised, and the Bloco is committed to this task. The Party of the European Left has not fulfilled this task and now sees its political capacity weakened by internal fragmentation, the result of sectarianism against the forces of the Now the People platform, to which the Bloco belongs. The Bloco, which can no longer accept the ways in which the Party of the European Left operates, has decided to disaffiliate from this party and intends to create a new European political party as soon as possible, in accordance with the law and on the initiative of the Agora or Povo platform,” the Portuguese Bloco announced in a statement after the elections, in which it stressed that the divergences had been accentuated by the war in Ukraine.
Economically, for Die Linke this represents a slight loss given that it loses the direct contribution of the parties that left as well as part of the subsidy from the European budget corresponding to the MEPs who signed to join the PIE, among whom are some from France Insoumise, which is the party most represented within La Gauche/GUE.
However, what they regret within the PIE is the image of political division that the formation of a new party implies. “We have always defended that there are united spaces. It is a pity that a division can be made visible at a time of the rise of the extreme right in Europe,” they emphasize.
Podemos maintains that the new party does not appear as a counterpoint to the PIE but rather “as part of the Now the People platform that has been operating for five years and it is logical that it follows this path of transformation.”
An alliance cooked over time
The links between Podemos, La Francia Insumisa and the Left Bloc to work in an alliance at the European level go back a long way. In Spain, Mariano Rajoy’s PP was governing, with only a few months left before the motion of censure that removed him from power, and Pablo Iglesias was still at the head of the party. On April 12, 2018, in Lisbon, the Spanish politician Jean Luc Mélenchon and Catarina Marins signed the declaration “for a democratic revolution in Europe” that gave birth to the Ahora el Pueblo (“Now the People”) alliance, the embryo of the party that was registered this week.
“We are tired of waiting. We are tired of believing those who govern us from Berlin and Brussels. We are getting to work to build a project for a new order for Europe. A democratic, fair and equitable order that respects the sovereignty of the people. An order that meets our desires and needs. A new order, at the service of the people,” reads this manifesto, written in view of the European elections that will take place a year later, in 2019.
Mélenchon traveled to Madrid a few months later to deliver a speech with Iglesias. The two leaders share some similarities and founded their political forces in the heat of the social mobilizations of the last decade. A year earlier, the French leader had barely won 20% of the vote in the presidential elections, relegating the French socialists to ostracism.
At that time, in addition to the three parties that had signed the document, the Swedish Vänsterpartiet, the Danish Enhedslisten and the Finnish Vasemmisto joined this alliance. In the run-up to the last elections, at the various meetings held first in Paris and then in Copenhagen, left-wing formations from other countries were incorporated.
Last February, a dozen parties agreed in the Danish capital on a decalogue of measures for the 9J European elections. Among the priorities, the alliance placed feminism as a “transformative axis”, the defense of women’s rights and the LGBTIQ+ community and, in the midst of the Israeli offensive in Gaza, it bet on the imposition of strong sanctions against “invading powers” such as Benjamin Netanyahu’s country.
Although some of these meetings saw the participation of forces such as the German Die Linke, the Irish Sinn Feinn or the Croatian Mozemo, the alliance ultimately added its original members only to the Polish Razem.
The creation of this new European party comes at an important time for Mélenchon’s party, whose commitment to a left front during the July legislative elections was crucial in stopping the far right. The leader of La France Insoumise has made a name for himself in recent weeks, in the midst of tensions with President Emmanuel Macron over negotiations for the formation of a new government.
Podemos, on the other hand, is going through a complicated period, with little influence on Spanish politics after leaving Sumar in December 2023. With four deputies in Congress, the party led by Ione Belarra has placed its survival this year precisely on the European elections of the 9J, in which it placed Irene Montero at the top of the list and after which it obtained two MEPs.
At the state level, Podemos has also begun, with its separation from Sumar, a strategy of differentiation in the space of the alternative left, in this case opposed to that of its French colleagues. After almost a decade of alliance policy with Izquierda Unida and the rest of the actors, the tensions with Yolanda Díaz’s coalition have resulted in a total rupture, with no sign of recomposition for the moment.
