La France Insoumise (FI or LFI; ; "France Unbowed") is a left-wing populist political party in France, launched in 2016 by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, then a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) and former co-president of the Left Party (PG). It aims to implement the eco-socialist and democratic socialist programme L'Avenir en commun ().
The party nominated Mélenchon as its candidate for the presidential election of 2017. He came fourth in the first round, receiving 19.5% of the vote and failing to qualify for the second round by around 2%. After the legislative election of 2017, La France Insoumise formed a parliamentary group of 17 members of the National Assembly, with Mélenchon as the group's president. In the 2019 European Parliament election, it however only won six seats, below its expectations.
In 2022, Mélenchon again became the party's candidate for president, and later Christiane Taubira, winner of the People's Primary, endorsed Mélenchon. In the first round of 2022 French presidential election voting in April, Mélenchon came in third, garnering 7.7 million votes, narrowly behind second-place finisher Marine Le Pen.
The party uses the lower case Greek letter phi as its logotype.
History
La France Insoumise was founded on 10 February 2016, based on the belief that traditional parties and political organisations no longer serve democracy and instead transverse movements are needed. The movement is particularly inspired by the Spanish party Podemos, the election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour Party leader in the United Kingdom in 2015 and the candidacy of Bernie Sanders in the Democratic Party presidential primaries of 2016 in the United States.
Its first meeting took place in Place Stalingrad, Paris on 5 June 2016 in the form of a march numbering about 10,000 people, according to the organisers. A second meeting took place in the gardens of the Toulouse Observatory on 28 August 2016.
The programme L'Avenir en commun (English: "A Shared Future") was adopted during the Lille convention, attended by just under 1,000 people in Saint-André-lez-Lille on 15/16 October 2016. Several personalities addressed the convention, including former Société Générale trader Jérôme Kerviel, LuxLeaks whistleblower Antoine Deltour, political specialist Paul Ariès, former Malian Minister of Culture Aminata Traoré, and former Speaker of the Hellenic Parliament Zoe Konstantopoulou.
At this convention, the movement also presented twenty candidates for the French legislative election of June 2017, including Jean-Marie Brom, physicist, research director of the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and spokesperson of Sortir du nucléaire; Rémy Garnier, public finance inspector and whistleblower in the Cahuzac affair; Lionel Burriello, leader of the CGT union for the ArcelorMittal steel works in Florange; Mehdi Kémoune, deputy secretary-general of the CGT union for Air France; actress Sophie De La Rochefoucauld; Marie-Hélène Bourlard, trade unionist featured in the movie Merci patron!; Olivia Cattan, journalist and founder of the association SOS Autisme France; and Nathalie Seguin, trade unionist and member of the French Communist Party (PCF).
In August 2017, La France Insoumise organized its first summer university (called Les AmFIs, a play between the word amphitheater and the acronym FI for France insoumise), a traditional moment in France where campuses open their doors to political party gatherings and meetings between activists, elected officials, and many philosophical and cultural guests. It was set in the Marseille Saint-Charles University and comprised four days of debates, conferences and workshops. The movement debated also about its future.
In the 2017 Corsican territorial election, local supporters of La France Insoumise under the banner of "La Corse Insoumise" were allied with the PCF. The PCF-FI alliance attacked Mélenchon and the list was disavowed by Mélenchon.
Ideology and political programme
The drawing up of the programme was coordinated by economist Jacques Généreux and lawyer Charlotte Girard. It drew its inspiration from L'Humain d'abord (English: "Human First"), the programme of the Left Front during the 2012 presidential election, from work carried out by the PG during its conventions on eco-socialism and summits for a "plan B in Europe", and from contributions from supporters of the movement, which the rapporteurs were asked to synthesize.
At the end of the Lille Convention, a synthesis of all the proposals resulted in a programme of seven axioms and 357 measures. It was adopted by more than 90% of voters.