ABSTRACT
Jean-Pierre Cheveenement’s Mouvement des citoyens which had taken most of the former left-wing CERES faction within the French Parti Socialiste (PS), proposed an ‘alternative’ policy in the 1994 European elections as a response both to the perceived rightward drift of the PS and to a prevalent French disillusion with politics. Chevènement’s decision not to stand in 1995 left the Mouvement floating between Jospin, the Communist, Robert Hue, the ecologist Dominique Voynet, and even Jacques Chirac, though Chevènement himself supported Jospin. In the event, four candidates fought the election from various positions on the left: Jospin, Hue, Voynet and the Trotskyist, Arlette Laguiller, thus mirroring a similar diversity on the right. The Communist Party through Hue’s determined campaign gained a further extension of life and continued to perturb, and to pose a challenge to the unity of the left.
