But the European environment has changed and the parties of the radical Euro-Left are moving, one after the other, into political obscurity. The only exception is the party of the radical Left in Greece-SYRIZA, which is still the main exception to the rule of political marginalization of the radical Euro-Left. But it can not escape the pressure of the new European political reality.
The messages sent by the elections in Portugal
Since 2015, Portugal has had a socialist minority government, which has been supported by parliament, but without the participation of the Bloc of the Left, a radical left-wing party, and the Communist Party of Portugal. The Bloc of the Left was formed in 1999 by a coalition of Marxists, Trotskyists and Social Democrats.
Its best election year was 2009, when he won 10.73% of the vote in the European elections and elected three MEPs, with Portugal having a total of 21. It recorded 9.81% in the parliamentary elections of the same year, electing 16 deputies out of a total of 230. The Bloc of the Left electoral career was later linked to the memoranda. In 2011, the Left Bloc fell to 5.17% and was left with eight deputies, as many voters saw it as supporting memorandum-type decisions by the then socialist government.
In the 2014 European elections, it lost two of the three seats due to a split that led to the creation of the small ecological party Livra, which won 2.2% in the European elections.
In the 2015 parliamentary elections, the Bloc of the Left returned to double-digit 10.2%, taking advantage of the popular dissatisfaction with the memorandum policy of the center-right government. From 2015 until the end of 2021, the Bloc of the Left supported, together with the Communist Party of Portugal, a government of the Socialist minority, but without participating in it. The two left-wing parties offered their parliamentary support in exchange for the Costa government adopting some of their proposals.
The scheme operated and was renewed in the 2019 parliamentary elections, in which the Bloc of the Left won 9.5% and 19 seats. However, on the occasion of the debate on the 2022 budget, the parties of the Left decided to turn against the Socialists, considering that the increase of the basic salary and other measures of the socialist government were below their expectations.
They voted against the budget, with the result that the Portuguese went to the polls in pandemic conditions two years before the end of the four-year term. Voters turned against the parties, which led to the fall of the government and early elections. The Bloc of the Left was reduced to a meager 4.5% and lost 14 of its 19 seats. The Socialists were rewarded for the good management of the pandemic and the economy, increased their rates and reached autonomy.
Portugal’s message, therefore, is ‘yes’ to social-democratic management and ‘no’ to the demands of the radical Left. The Bloc of the Left from a protagonist – albeit indirectly to the developments – turned into a small opposition force.
The messages of Spain
A similar decline in the influence of the radical Left is observed in Spain. The Podemos (We Can) party was founded in January 2014 by Pablo Iglesias and other academics of the new generation. It expressed the movements that had developed against social inequality and corruption.
In May 2014, Podemos made the surprise, winning 8% in the European elections and securing 5 seats in the European Parliament. A barrage of positive publicity ensued, particularly on the internet and on television, which boosted the influence and influence of Podemos and his leadership.
It is noteworthy that in November 2014 the authoritative Spanish newspaper “El Pais” published a poll showing Podemos first with 27.7%. Iglesias, with his characteristic ponytail, had emerged for months as the “star” of the radical Euro-Left. He took part in the large pre-election rally of SYRIZA, in January 2015, promoting the slogan “First we will occupy Athens, then we will occupy Madrid”.
A few days after the big pre-election rally, SYRIZA was able to occupy Athens politically, but the political occupation of Madrid never came. In the 2015 parliamentary elections, the Podemos won 49 seats out of a total of 350, but were unable to overtake the Socialists and impose their hegemony on the center-left. In the 2016 parliamentary elections, they retreated slightly to the 47 seats and their ambition to dominate the Socialists came to an end.
In the double elections of April and November 2019, they took the plunge, as the Socialists prevailed over the center-right People’s Party and emerged as the leading force. Podemos dropped first to 32 seats and then to 26.
A message of weakening of Podemos was also sent by the European elections in May 2019, when it was reduced from 5 to 3 MEP seats, out of a total of 59 in Spain. The weakening of the Podemos allowed the Socialists to join the Sanchez government, without much consideration, to secure a parliamentary majority.
The transformation of the radical Podemos, which claimed the great overthrow into a government complement of the Spanish center-left, disappointed a large part of the voters and their executives. After the personal defeat in the regional elections of Madrid in 2021, Pablo Iglesias resigned from the leadership and retired from political life.
The vision of the dominance of the radical Left was first lost in Madrid and is extremely likely to be lost later in Athens (Greece).
The fragmented French left
In France, the radical Left still retains countable forces, but they are fragmented and therefore can not bring political results.
In the run-up to the presidential elections of April 2022, the internal problems of the radical Left emerged. The Socialist Party, which for a long time moved to the left of the socialist, social democratic parties of Portugal, Spain and Germany, has not yet recovered from the shock of 2017.
Emmanuel Macron, who began as an associate and minister of the Socialist President of the Republic of Hollande, became politically autonomous, took the surprise by announcing the end of the Left-Right confrontation and won the presidential election. Since then, the Socialist Party has been waging a poll of around 5% -6%. This is the percentage of An Indalgo, a socialist mayor of Paris, who is running in the presidential election.
The strongest figure in the field of the French radical Left is Melanson of the “Rebellious France”, who records polls of 10% in the run-up to the presidential election. He had run in the first round of the 2017 presidential election, then reached 20% and almost made the surprise and advanced to the second round. The candidate of the once powerful French Communist Party is now going unnoticed in the polls, while the percentage of the candidate of the Ecologists, Yannick Zando, is between 6% -7%.
Faced with this state of fragmentation and political weakness, Christian Tombira, a former justice minister in the presidency of Hollande and a Member of Parliament for French Guiana for many four years, also decided to run for president. Tombira supporters have staged an online poll to find a common candidate for the French Left. Almost 400,000 took part in it and Tombira emerged first with 49% of extremely positive opinions. However, Zando, Melanson and Indalgo refused to take part in the vote and recognize the result.
It is likely that the April presidential and parliamentary elections will formalize the marginalization of the Socialist Party, the disappearance of the Communist Party and the recording of some decent percentages by “Disobedient France” and the Ecologists, but without much potential for developments.
If we consider that in 1981 the French Socialists and Mitterrand paved the way for “change” in Europe and Greece, that the French Communist Party was then powerful and that until the 2017 presidential elections the Socialist Party controlled the Presidency of the Republic and the majority in Parliament, we realize how far France has shifted to the right and how limited the forces of the wider and radical Left have been.
The “venting” of the radical left in Italy
But where the forces of the radical Left were literally annihilated is in Italy, where the phenomenon of Eurocommunism had developed with great success.
In 1991 the Italian Communist Party decided – due to the absolute bankruptcy of existing socialism – to become a Democratic Party of the Left. The Democratic Party then shifted to the center-left and today is the major pro-European political force supporting the Draghi government.
The Communist Re-establishment Party (PRC) sprang from the ashes of the Italian Communist Party, which waged a difficult electoral battle until 2006 to continue the communist tradition, with percentages of 5% -6%. Since 2008, the Communist Reconstruction Party has not been represented in the Italian Parliament, and has managed to elect an MEP in the period 2014-2019.
Another failed attempt to develop the Italian Radical Left concerns the creation of the Italian Left party in 2017. In 2015, 32 deputies left the Democratic Party and the Five Star Movement – the Italian Parliament has 630 – as part of the left-wing search. They were followed by 8 senators and 2 MEPs, but personal strategies stood in the way of the development of the new body. In the parliamentary elections of 2018, he recorded a percentage of 3.4%, securing only three parliamentary seats.
In a country where an impressive anti-fascist movement developed, had a strong CC throughout the post-war period and then set the example of communist renewal with Eurocommunism, the disappearance of the radical Left is truly striking.
The future of the radical left in Germany is hard
The fate of the Die Linke party, which expresses the German radical Left, is also hard. Die Linke was founded in 2007 through the merger of the Democratic Socialist Party, the political successor of the Socialist Unity Party, which exercised communist dictatorship in the former East Germany, and the Labor and Social Justice Party, as a result of the left-wing left wing.
In the first parliamentary elections in which the new party participated – in 2009 – it won 11.9% and secured 76 seats out of a total of 622. In 2013 it recorded a percentage of 8.6% and in 2007 it recorded 9.2%. There was a big drop in the parliamentary elections of September 2021, where the party Die Linke fell to 4.9% and 39 seats out of a total of 735.
The party’s strength is concentrated in the eastern part of the country, which was part of the former East Germany, but is also losing significant strength there, mainly in favor of the far-right Alternative for Germany.
The sharp decline of the German radical Left is due to the dynamic recovery of the Social Democratic Party, which started the election campaign with a slim 15% of the vote, but eventually won the election with 25%. It is also due to the impressive rise of the Greens, who are joining the ruling coalition along with the Social Democrats and the Liberals.
The electoral disappearance of the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia also went almost unnoticed. The fall of existing socialism led, in 1992, to the dissolution of the Czech Communist Party, which had been in power during the communist, Soviet era.
The successor to the communist traditions of the Czech Republic was the newly formed Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia, which adapted its program and statute to the requirements of the Republic. At times, the new type of CCP achieved remarkable electoral results. 18.5% in the 2002 elections and 14.9% in the 2013 elections.
In the 2017 elections, however, it suffered a decline of 7.8% and its seats were reduced from 39 to 15 out of a total of 200. In search of a new strategy, the Czech Communists backed without participation the government of the Liberal billionaire Babis, who was later accused of authoritarianism and illegally subsidizing his companies with European funds.
The 2021 parliamentary elections led to the marginal defeat of Babis, his ouster and the overthrow of the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia, which was reduced to 3.6% of the vote, lost all 15 seats and remained with one seat in the European Parliament.
