Former Green MEP Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a historic figure on the French left, on Monday threw his support behind Raphaël Glucksmann for France’s April-May 2027 presidential election, in an interview with Le Point magazine.
“In the reformist left camp, he is the only one to have adopted a position that opens up a future for a social-ecological left. He should be supported, not thwarted,” said Cohn-Bendit, a former leader of the May 1968 student movement.
According to Cohn-Bendit, Glucksmann, a European Parliament member from the left-wing Place Publique party, is “the only candidate formulating a policy for transforming reformist politics on the left”.
Glucksmann has not yet officially declared his candidacy for the presidential election. He is expected to confirm his bid by the end of the summer and his intention whether or not he wants to take part in the primaries for the social-democrat camp.
Charisma
Cohn-Bendit said the focus should be on Glucksmann’s political ideas rather than on his charisma as a leader.
“The aim is to build a project that spans from 2027 through to 2032,” he said, rejecting possible bids by former president François Hollande, former presidential candidate Ségolène Royal and former prime minister Bernard Cazeneuve, calling them “has-beens”.
Cohn-Bendit, was also highly critical of France Unbowed leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, saying he was “no longer on the left” because he had “abandoned universalist values”.
Cohn-Bendit also accused Mélenchon of adopting what hes called "antisemitic positioning” and criticised his foreign-policy views, which he described as support for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Cohn-Bendit, who secured the Greens’ strongest result in a national election in the 2009 European elections, meanwhile sees Horizons leader Edouard Philippe as “the only candidate of the reformist right”.
He predicted that former prime minister Gabriel Attal would eventually withdraw in favour of the former Le Havre mayor, Philippe.
Cohn-Bendit himself was a student leader during the May 1968 Paris protests, nicknamed "Danny the Red", because of both his political ideas and the colour of his hair. He co-headed the European Greens-European Free Alliance in the European Parliament (EP) and currently co-chairs the EP Spinelli Group that promotes a federalist Europe – a hypothetical scenario where European countries form a sovereign superstate organised as a federation, while the current European Union is a political and economic union of member states that retain their sovereignty.
(with newswires)
