François Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand was a French politician who served as President of France from 1981 to 1995, the longest holder of that position in the history of France. As a former Socialist Party First Secretary, he was the first left-wing politician to assume the presidency under the Fifth Republic.
Lionel Robert Jospin is a French politician who served as Prime Minister of France from 1997 to 2002.
Michel Rocard was a French politician and a member of the Socialist Party (PS). He served as Prime Minister under François Mitterrand from 1988 to 1991 during which he created the Revenu minimum d'insertion (RMI), a social minimum welfare program for indigents, and achieved the Matignon Accords regarding the status of New Caledonia. He was a member of the European Parliament, and was strongly involved in European policies until 2009. In 2007, he joined a Commission under the authority of Nicolas Sarkozy's Minister of Education, Xavier Darcos.
Gaullism is a French political stance based on the thought and action of World War II French Resistance leader Charles de Gaulle, who would become the founding President of the Fifth French Republic. De Gaulle withdrew French forces from the NATO Command Structure, forced the removal of Allied bases from France, as well as initiated France's own independent nuclear deterrent programme. His actions were predicated on the view that France would not be subordinate to other nations.
The Rally for the Republic was a Gaullist and conservative political party in France. Originating from the Union of Democrats for the Republic (UDR), it was founded by Jacques Chirac in 1976 and presented itself as the heir of Gaullist politics. It was one of the two major parties in French politics, alongside the Socialist Party. On 21 September 2002, the RPR was merged into the Union for the Presidential Majority, later renamed the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP).
François Gérard Georges Nicolas Hollande is a French politician who served as the 24th president of France from 2012 to 2017. Before his presidency, he was First Secretary of the Socialist Party (PS) from 1997 to 2008, Mayor of Tulle from 2001 to 2008, as well as President of the General Council of Corrèze from 2008 to 2012. He also held the 1st constituency of Corrèze seat in the National Assembly for the third time, first from 1988 to 1993, then from 1997 until 2012 and was reelected in 2024.
The Radical Party of the Left is a social-liberal political party in France. A party in the Radical tradition, since 1972 the PRG has been a close ally of the major party of the centre-left in France, the Socialist Party. After the 2017 presidential and legislative elections, negotiations to merge the PRG with the Radical Party began and the refounding congress to reunite the parties into the Radical Movement was held on 9 and 10 December 2017. However, a faction of ex-PRG members, including its last president Sylvia Pinel, split from the Radical Movement in February 2019 due to its expected alliance with La République En Marche in the European elections and resurrected the PRG.
Pierre Eugène Bérégovoy was a French politician who served as Prime Minister of France under President François Mitterrand from 2 April 1992 to 29 March 1993. He was a member of the Socialist Party and Member of Parliament for Nièvre's 1st constituency.
Pierre Mauroy was a French Socialist politician who was Prime Minister of France from 1981 to 1984 under President François Mitterrand. Mauroy also served as Mayor of Lille from 1973 to 2001. At the time of his death Mauroy was the emeritus mayor of the city of Lille. He died from complications of lung cancer on 7 June 2013 at the age of 84.
Presidential elections were held in France on 26 April 1981, with a second round on 10 May. François Mitterrand defeated incumbent president, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing to become the first Socialist president of the Fifth Republic. It is the first presidential election in French history that an incumbent president actively seeking reelection was denied a second term.
The Unified Socialist Party was a socialist political party in France, founded on April 3, 1960. It was originally led by Édouard Depreux.
Henri Emmanuelli was a French politician. A member of the Socialist Party (PS), he was a deputy for Landes from 1978 to 1981, from 1986 to 1997 and again from 2000 to 2017. He served as President of the National Assembly from 1992 to 1993 and First Secretary of the Socialist Party from 1994 to 1995.
Legislative elections were held in France on 16 March 1986 to elect the eighth National Assembly of the Fifth Republic. Contrary to other legislative elections of the Fifth Republic, the electoral system used was that of party-list proportional representation.
Legislative elections were held in France on 4 and 11 March 1973, to elect the fifth National Assembly of the Fifth Republic.
The Epinay Congress was the third national congress of the French Socialist Party, which took place on 11, 12 and 13 June 1971, in the town of Épinay-sur-Seine, in the northern suburbs of Paris. During this congress, not only did the party admit the Convention of Republican Institutions into its ranks, but the party leadership was also won by Mitterrand and his supporters. For the observers and the French Socialists themselves, the Epinay Congress was the real founding act of the current PS. It was also the turning point in Mitterrand's grand political plan, which led to the ascendancy of the French Left over the next quarter-century, and eventually, in 1981, to Mitterrand's election to the Presidency of France for two consecutive 7-year terms.
The Gauche Plurielle was a left-wing coalition in France, composed of the Socialist Party, the French Communist Party, the Greens, the Left Radical Party, and the Citizens' Movement. Succeeding Alain Juppé's conservative government, the Plural Left governed France from 1997 to 2002. It was another case of cohabitation between rival parties at the head of the state and of the government. Following the failure of the left in the 2002 legislative election, it was replaced by another conservative government, this time headed by Jean-Pierre Raffarin.
110 Propositions for France was the Socialist Party's program for the 1981 presidential election during which the Socialist Party's candidate, François Mitterrand, was elected by 51.76% of the people. This program influenced significantly the policies enacted during Mitterrand's two terms.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon is a French politician who was a member of the National Assembly for Bouches-du-Rhône's 4th constituency from 2017 to 2022. He led the La France Insoumise group in the National Assembly from 2017 to 2021. Mélenchon was elected as a member of the European Parliament (MEP) in 2009 and reelected in 2014. He has run for president of France three times. In 2022, he came within 1.2 percentage points of reaching the second round in France's two-round voting system.
The Socialist Party is a centre-left to left-wing political party in France. It holds social democratic and pro-European views. The PS was for decades the largest party of the "French Left" and used to be one of the two major political parties under the Fifth Republic, along with the Rally for the Republic in the late 20th century, and with the Union for a Popular Movement in the early 2000s. It replaced the earlier French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) in 1969 and is currently led by First Secretary Olivier Faure. The PS is a member of the Party of European Socialists, Progressive Alliance and Socialist International.
La France Insoumise is a left-wing political party in France. It was 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 utilises the lower case Greek letter phi as its logotype.
