Mélenchon officially launched the Left Party ('Parti de gauche'; PG) together with co-founder Marc Dolez on Saturday (29 November) during a meeting held in the Seine Saint-Denis region near Paris.
The meeting, which gathered between 1,000 and 2,000 activists according to AFP (3,000 according to the PG), was attended by Oskar Lafontaine, a former finance minister under Gerhard Schröder who left the German SPD to found Die Linke in 2005.
The PG's immediate objective will be to launch a "left front", in association with the Communist Party, that will compete with the Socialists in view of the European elections next June, Mélenchon said.
Speaking at the meeting, Lafontaine said the left front would stand resolutely and "refuse the rotten compromises" of the Socialist parties in France, Germany and the rest of Europe. There is "an immense availability on the left to fight capitalism, to go off the beaten track of powerlessness embodied by social liberalism," added Mélenchon.
Writing on his blog, Mélenchon denounced "the decay of the Socialist Party" in France, which was torn by internal rivalries when it elected its new leader a week ago. He said the party had now "collapsed" as a result of its "dreams of an alliance with the centre that would put it in line with the other social democratic parties of Europe".
On Europe, the PG vows to "pull together" voters for the European elections in June, via a programme based on "the refusal of the Lisbon Treaty and of the liberal policies which it contains."
"The Left Party is the tool which is at the service of this task."
Benoît Hamon, a French Socialist MEP who leads the left wing of the Socialist Party, reacted with scepticism to the creation of the PG. "One will need to explain how something which divides the Left can bring it back to power with a clear line," he told Canal+ television. "Here is one additional house on the Left, I think we have enough already."
The PG's launch took place just days before a congress of the Party of European Socialists, which meets on 1-2 December to adopt its manifesto for the European elections. The French Socialist Party will be represented by its new leader, Martine Aubry, who is seen as the embodiment of the party's more leftist wing.
