It seems almost a lifetime ago. France’s elections in spring 2022 saw the rise of a united-left slate, the New Ecological and Social Popular Union (NUPES), which not only repeatedly topped polls but denied Emmanuel Macron a majority in the National Assembly. Last year, his government seemed to be on the ropes, faced with a mass movement against a rise in the pension age. But as France again heads to the polls for the European elections this June 9, the Left is in a precarious condition.

Firstly, the NUPES experiment — the alliance of all left-wing formations from the Parti Socialiste via the Communists, the Greens, and France Insoumise — seems to be disappearing. These parties are all running separate lists for the EU elections. Worse, this division is taking place at a time when in France, as around Europe, we are seeing rampant inflation, growing social grievances, and — above all — a massive far-right breakthrough. The question of how to form a common front faced with these pressing demands is thus a recurrent concern on the French left.

Surely, the value of left-wing unity and NUPES more specifically can be subject to a number of caveats. NUPES’s limits were already apparent the day after the parliamentary elections (the only election in which these parties actually all ran together). One oft-leveled criticism was the heavy concentration of its electorate in certain social categories — present in large urban areas but far less so among other parts of the working class in towns and rural France. This issue is especially important given that Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National has enjoyed real momentum in these areas and among these same groups; it elected eighty-nine MPs in June 2022, an unprecedented level of local representation. This gap was specifically pointed out by several figures such as France Insoumise MP François Ruffin, himself elected in a semirural northern constituency around the city of Amiens.