Parti radical de gauche
| Parti radical de gauche Radical party of the left |
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| Party leader | Guillaume Lacroix |
| founding | 1972 |
| Headquarters | Avenue Constant-Coquelin 3 75007 Paris |
| Youth organization | Jeunes radicaux de gauche |
| Alignment | Left liberalism , solidarism , pro-Europeanism |
| Colours) | Blue , yellow |
| National Assembly |
2/577 |
| senate |
2/348 |
| MEPs |
0/79 |
| Website | www.partiradicaldegauche.fr |
The Parti radical de gauche ( PRG , German “radical party of the left” or “party of left radicals”) is a left-liberal political party in France . The radical in the name is in continuity with historical republican , liberal political movements in France.
history
Split of the Parti radical - MRG
The party emerged in 1972 as a split from the left-wing bourgeois Parti républicain, radical et radical-socialiste (Parti radical or PR for short). This had been one of the most important parties in France during the Third Republic , but had lost its importance during the Fourth Republic , which had continued since the beginning of the Fifth Republic in 1958, as its majority voting rights favored large parties. Small parties practically only have a chance in this if they enter into an alliance with a larger party. Correspondingly, the right wing of the Parti radical, with General Secretary Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, sought a center-right alliance (Mouvement Réformateur) with Christian Democrats and other bourgeois parties. The left wing of the Parti radical, however, favored participation in the Union de la gauche (Union of the Left) with Parti socialiste (PS) and Parti communiste français (PCF) under the leadership of François Mitterrand .
The left wing, led by Robert Fabre , then left PR and founded the Mouvement de la gauche radicale-socialiste ( MGRS , German movement of the radical-socialist left ). The party signed the joint program (Program commun) of the left parties and ran for parliamentary elections in 1973 as part of the Left Union. The election was won by the center-right camp, to which the rump of the Parti radical belonged, which from then on was called Parti radical valoisien to distinguish it; the MGRS only got 2.8% of the vote and 12 seats. In the same year the party renamed itself Mouvement des radicaux de gauche ( MRG , German movement of the left radicals ), which it carried until 1995.
In the following decades she always stood in alliance with the socialists, to whom she owed uninterrupted representation in both chambers of parliament. It had its strongholds in southwestern France (regions of Aquitaine and Midi-Pyrénées ), where traditionally a left-wing liberal-bourgeois electorate is quite well represented, as well as on Corsica . There, as agreed, the PS renounced its own candidate in some constituencies and instead supported that of the radicaux de gauche . In the Senate, the left radicals had a factional community with the senators of the Parti radical valoisien until 2008, under the traditional name Gauche démocratique (“democratic left”), which in 1989 renamed itself Rassemblement démocratique européen (RDE), which in 1995 still had the word social was added (RDSE). During the presidency of François Mitterrand (1981-1995; with the exception of the cohabitations 1986-88 and 1993-95) the MRG belonged to the socialist-led government.
Energy radicale under therapy
Under the leadership of the party chairman Jean-François Hory (1992-1995) and the entrepreneur Bernard Tapie , the party tried in the mid-1990s to establish itself as a political force alongside the socialists by means of left-wing populist positions. With Tapie, who was also the owner and president of the football club Olympique Marseille at the time, the party addressed young people, the unemployed and low-wage earners in addition to its traditional middle-class clientele. During this time, the MRG appeared under the name Énergie radicale . She had her greatest electoral success in the 1994 European elections , when she won 12% of the vote and 13 of the 87 French seats. The European parliamentarians of the Energy Radicale formed the parliamentary group of the European Radical Alliance with members from other member states . Even Bernard Kouchner , a founder of Doctors Without Borders , joined the party during this period. When Tapie fell into disrepute because of various criminal proceedings, the high altitude was quickly over.
Since 1995
The party renamed itself in 1995/96 in Parti radical-socialiste (PRS, German radical-socialist party ) and was then perceived again as a small "appendage" of the socialists. After the 1997 parliamentary elections , the party's strength in the National Assembly peaked with 14 MPs. However, since it was not enough for its own parliamentary group, it formed a parliamentary group with the Mouvement des citoyens and Les Verts - the Groupe radical, citoyen et vert - for the legislative period up to 2002 . Under Prime Minister Lionel Jospin (1997–2002), Radicaux de gauche sat again at the cabinet table. In 1998 it was renamed again and the party took its final name, Parti radical de gauche (PRG).
For the 2002 presidential election , the PRG put up its own candidate for the first time since 1981: Christiane Taubira , an MP from French Guiana . It received around 660,000 votes (2.3%). The fragmentation of the left-wing camp contributed to the fact that the socialist candidate Lionel Jospin only came third and the runoff election took place between the conservative Jacques Chirac and the right-wing extremist Jean-Marie Le Pen .
In the presidential elections in 2007 and 2012, the PRG again renounced its own candidacy and supported the socialist candidates, Ségolène Royal and François Hollande . During Hollande's presidency (2012–17), the PRG provided Minister of Justice with Christiane Taubira. She was best known for the law to open marriage to same-sex couples (marriage pour tous) .
In the European elections in May 2014, the electoral alliance with the Socialists helped the PRG to a mandate that was carried out by Virginie Rozière. The former Minister for Housing and Regional Development Sylvia Pinel acted as party chairman from February 2016 until the merger in December 2017; The general secretary was Guillaume Lacroix. The party has three MPs in the National Assembly elected in 2017 . She was most recently represented in the Philippe II cabinet with Annick Girardin as Minister for Overseas Territories and Jacques Mézard as Minister for Regional Development ; the two also belonged to the Philippe I cabinet .
After the 2017 elections, which brought about a profound upheaval in the French party system, after 45 years of separation, the Parti radical valoisien and Parti radical de gauche converged again. On December 9, 2017, they finally merged to form the Mouvement radical , which positions itself as a social-liberal force in the middle. Some members of the PRG, including the European parliamentarian Virginie Rozière and the former member of the national assembly Stéphane Saint-André , rejected the merger and instead founded Les Radicaux de gauche .
In February 2019, the majority of the former PRG members, including the last chairwoman Pinel, left the Mouvement radical again. They decided the following month to revive the PRG as an independent party. The point of contention was that, from the point of view of the radical left, too close to the La République en Marche party (LREM) of President Emmanuel Macron , which was reflected in a joint list of candidates for the 2019 European elections . The revived PRG, on the other hand, took part in a joint list with the Parti socialiste and the new Place publique party by Raphaël Glucksmann . Since Minister Annick Girardin remained radical in the Mouvement, the PRG is now in opposition to the Macron / Philippe government.
Web links
Footnotes
- ↑ Joachim Schild: Politics. In: Joachim Schild, Henrik Uterwedde: France. Politics, economy, society. 2nd edition, VS Verlag, Wiesbaden 2006, pp. 19-137, on p. 45, fn. 8.
- ↑ Joachim Schild: Political parties and party system in transition. In: Adolf Kimmel, Henrik Uterwedde: Country Report France. History, politics, economy, society. VS Verlag, Wiesbaden 2005, pp. 268–285, on p. 279.
- ^ Udo Kempf: The political system of France . 4th edition, Wiesbaden 2007, p. 190.
- ^ A b c d Gisela Müller-Brandeck-Bocquet, Patrick Moreau: France. A political geography. Leske + Budrich, Opladen 2000, p. 105.
- ^ A b Joseph Szarka: The Parties of the French 'Plural Left'. An Uneasy Complimentary. In: Robert Elgie: The Changing French Political System. Frank Cass, 2000, pp. 20-37, at p. 26.
- ↑ Florian Hartleb: Right and left populism. A case study based on the Schill Party and PDS . Wiesbaden 2004, p. 21.
- ^ Ina Stephan: The Parti socialiste (PS). In: Sabine Ruß u. a .: parties in France. Continuity and Change in the Fifth Republic. Leske + Budrich, Opladen 2000, pp. 147–171, at p. 168, fn. 21.
- ↑ Joachim Schild: Politics. In: Joachim Schild, Henrik Uterwedde: France. Politics, economy, society. 2nd edition, VS Verlag, Wiesbaden 2006, p. 54.
- ↑ Virginie Rozière acte la scission of radicaux. In: Tarbes7.fr , December 14, 2017.