France's Leftwing Alliance: A New Hope with Bold Reforms

France's leftwing parties, including Socialists, Greens, Communists, and hard-left Unbowed France, have formed an alliance dubbed the 'Popular Front.' Their agenda focuses on lowering the retirement age, linking salaries to inflation, and introducing a wealth tax. The alliance aims to challenge President Macron in the upcoming parliamentary elections.

France's leftwing parties want to lower the retirement age, link salaries to inflation and introduce a wealth tax for the rich, leaders of a newly agreed alliance that spans from the hard left to the Socialists and Greens said on Friday.

The parties set aside differences to strike a deal late on Thursday ahead of a parliamentary election that President Emmanuel Macron unexpectedly called for June 30 and July 7 after his centrist party suffered a bruising defeat in Sunday's European Parliament elections. "Emmanuel Macron won't have a majority," Greens leader Marine Tondelier told a new conference.

"It's either the far right or us," she said, urging leftwing voters to back the new alliance, which gathers the Socialists, Greens, Communists, and hard-left Unbowed France (LFI) in an alliance dubbed the "Popular Front." Opinion polls show that the leftist alliance is unlikely to win the election.

Tondelier said a top priority for the group would be to scrap Macron's very unpopular pension reform. Other measures would include increasing the minimum wage, introducing a wealth tax, boosting measures to fight climate change, and reforming the European Union's agriculture policy. The leftist bloc worked together during the last parliamentary election campaign in 2022 but a leadership struggle and policy differences - including over the Gaza war - led to the alliance's effective collapse.

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