Brussels – The leader of the Place Publique party and MEP (S&D), Raphaël Glucksmann, has won the social-democratic left’s primary election in France. With 66.13 per cent of the votes, he comfortably beat the secretary of the Socialist Party (PS), Olivier Faure (14.48 per cent), yesterday (11 October). The other Socialist candidates, Ségolène Royal (7.62 per cent) and Jérôme Guedj (5.83 per cent), did not secure more than ten per cent, and the same applies to the founder of the Republican and Socialist Left (GRS) party, Emmanuel Maurel (5.92 per cent). For the first time in its history, the PS will therefore not have a candidate standing in the presidential election.
A staunch Europeanist, Glucksmann advocates a break with the radical left, which he sees as being led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise, currently in the running for the Élysée. In his political manifesto, the MEP writes “that France can once again become a great power and that, to achieve this, it must establish itself as the driving force behind a sovereign Europe, revitalise its democracy, rebuild its social model and fully embrace the ecological revolution.” In recent years in the European Parliament, Glucksmann has therefore distinguished himself through his staunch defence of Ukraine – his grandfather’s country of birth – and his condemnation of unfair Chinese competition and Beijing’s repression of the Uyghur minority. From 2008 to 2012, he also served as an adviser to the then Georgian president, Mikhail Saakashvili.
