France’s left-wing New Popular Front (NFP), an alliance of parties hastily assembled after President Emmanuel Macron called a surprise snap parliamentary election, looked set to score a shock win in Sunday’s vote over the far right and the ruling centrists.

If initial projections are confirmed, Macron will be required to name a prime minister from the bloc. The initial estimates are typically accurate.

The NFP – made up of the Communist Party, the hard left France Unbowed, the Green party and the Socialist Party – has not said who would be its pick for prime minister. The following are some of its best-known figures:

Jean-Luc Melenchon, Hard Left France Unbowed Party

Jean-Luc Melenchon, 72, has been a fixture in French left-wing politics for decades and held ministerial posts in past governments, when he was a member of the Socialist Party.

He ran for president in 2012, 2017 and 2022, improving his score each time. He came third in 2022, just behind far-right leader Marine Le Pen. Macron won that election.

A fiery orator, Melenchon is one of the most divisive figures in French politics, enthusing some voters while horrifying others with his unbridled tax-and-spend proposals, class war rhetoric and controversial foreign policy positions, especially on Gaza. Critics accuse him of antisemitism, which he denies.

Marine Tondelier, Leader Of The Greens

Tondelier, 37, grew up in Henin-Beaumont, a town in northern France that is well-known as a bastion of the far-right National Rally (RN) and its leader Le Pen.

Tondelier has a long record of opposing the RN.

She was elected as an opposition member of the town’s municipal council in 2014. She documented her experiences working under an RN mayor and what she described as the oppressive atmosphere generated by the far-right administration in a 2017 book entitled “News from the Front”.

Tondelier was also elected to a northern regional council in 2021, and she became leader of France’s best-known ecologist party, the Greens, the following year.

Raphael Glucksmann, Socialist Party

Raphael Glucksmann, 44, headed the Socialist list of candidates in the European elections in early June. It obtained nearly 14% of the vote, just behind Macron’s Together group. This was considered a sign of revival for a party that governed France in past decades but had recently fallen into electoral oblivion.

Glucksmann attended prestigious schools and had a career in journalism and broadcasting before branching out in a variety of directions, including being an adviser to then Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.

He advocates strong European support for Ukraine in its resistance against Russia’s invasion.

Laurent Berger, Former CFDT Trade Union Leader

Laurent Berger, 55, is a former head of one of France’s main trade unions, the moderate CFDT. He has a track record of strong opposition to the RN.

Berger has said he does not want to be prime minister, but others on the left have put his name forward, saying he could be a unifying figure and a popular alternative to Melenchon.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Paris:

Thousands marched in Paris and cities across France on Saturday to protest against the far-right National Rally (RN) ahead of upcoming elections to the French parliament.

Following the RN’s surge in last Sunday’s European elections, police said 350,000 people were expected to march and 21,000 officers had been mobilised after labour unions, student groups and rights groups called for rallies to oppose the anti-immigration, eurosceptic party.

At least 150 marches were expected in cities including Marseille, Toulouse, Lyon and Lille.

In Paris, where police said 75,000 people turned out, a march set off at 1200 GMT from Place de La Republique, in the east, going through the Bastille square to Nation.

According to the CGT union, cited by BFM TV, 250,000 marched in Paris and 640,000 in total across the country. Police said they had arrested seven people in Paris. The police said there had been 217,000 demonstrators across France.

Speaking at Place de La Republique, hard-left CGT union leader Sophie Binet told reporters: “We are marching because we are extremely worried that (the RN’s head) Jordan Bardella could become the next Prime Minister … We want to prevent this disaster.”

Carol-Ann Juste, a 22 year-old student taking part in the Paris march, said it was the first time she had taken part in a protest. She said she was “worried because people believe the lies of this party that has a truly racist heritage,” a reference to the National Front, a forerunner to the RN, whose leader Jean-Marie Le Pen was fined for remarks seen as anti-Semitic or xenophobic.

Juste said she wanted to “fight to preserve a country of human rights, freedom, and tolerance”.

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On the same march, Cecilia Lormeau, a 34-year old teacher who said she plans to vote for the Popular Front, an alliance of left-wing parties, said: “It is important to show we are mobilised and that the RN is not the majority of the people.”

President Emmanuel Macron called a snap legislative election, to be held in two rounds on June 30 and July 7, after his centrist alliance was trounced by the RN in last Sunday’s European Parliament ballot.

A first series of opinion polls have projected that the RN could win the election and be in a position to form the next government.

An OpinionWay-Vae Solis poll conducted for Les Echos and Radio Classique published on Saturday forecast RN would lead in the first round of the parliamentary election with 33% of the votes, ahead of the Popular Front on 25%.

Macron’s centrist camp was on 20%.

At least two polls have put the left not far behind the RN and ahead of Macron’s group.

In Tours, western France, where hundreds of protesters were taking part in a march, a banner read: “For liberties, for rights, for a social and democratic republic, against far-right ideas and against racism”.

Several banners read: “young people hate the FN (the RN’s former name), while a pensioner carried a banner that read: “Old people also hate the RN”.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

European countries’ flags fly at the European Parliament on April 23, 2024, in Strasbourg. The European election will take place on June 9, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

France has urged social media platforms to increase monitoring of disinformation online in the run-up to the European Parliament elections, a Minister said on April 24.

Jean-Noel Barrot, Minister for Europe at the Foreign Ministry, said two elements could possibly upset the poll on June 9: a high rate of abstentions and foreign interference.

His warning comes as French officials have repeatedly cautioned over the risk of disinformation — especially from Russia after its invasion of Ukraine — interfering with the polls.

To fight absenteeism, France is launching a vast media campaign to encourage its citizens to get out and vote.

As for disinformation, a new government agency mandated to detect disinformation called VIGINUM is on high alert, Mr. Barrot said.

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The junior Minister said he had urged the European Commission to help ensure social media platforms “require the greatest vigilance during the campaign period, the electoral silence period and on the day of the vote”.

He added he would be summoning representatives of top platforms in the coming days “so that they can present their action plan in France… to monitor and regulate” content.

VIGINUM head Marc-Antoine Brillant said disinformation had become common during elections.

“Since the mid-2010s, not a single major poll in a liberal democracy has been spared” attempts to manipulate results, he said.

“The year 2024 is a very particular one… with two major conflicts ongoing in Ukraine and Gaza which, by their nature, generate a huge amount of discussion and noise on social media” and with France hosting the Olympics from July, he said.

All this makes the European elections “particularly attractive for foreign actors and the manipulation of information,” he said.

Mr. Barrot mentioned the example of Slovakia, where September parliamentary elections were “gravely disturbed during the electoral silence period by the dissemination of a fake audio recording” targeting a pro-EU candidate.

A populist party that was critical of the European Union and NATO won and has since stopped military aid to Ukraine to fight off Russian forces.