Manon Aubry has been named the head of the list of La France Insoumise in the 2024 European elections with the determination to rethink the European Union.
At the age of 34, Manon Aubry has emerged as one of the emblematic figures of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s party, La France Insoumise, in recent years. Born in Fréjus in 1989, Manon Aubry graduated from Sciences Po Paris in political science and business and international relations. At the time, the rebellious MEP attended the establishment at the same time as Gabriel Attal, but was already defending ideas different from the Macronist as she confided in an interview with 20 Minutes.
It is within various NGOs that Manon Aubry cut her teeth: she worked for Médecins du Monde in Liberia in 2012 and for the Carter Center in the Democratic Republic of Congo from 2013 to 2014, before joining the NGO Oxfam France in Paris with whom she worked until 2019. That same year, she got involved with LFI, candidate in the European elections and moved to the European Parliament. Five years later, she hopes to retain her seat by running in the next European elections on June 9, 2024.
When officially announcing her candidacy for the European elections on January 28, 2024, during an interview with 20 Minutes, Manon Aubry called for a rally to the left-wing parties. “I appeal to all the orphans of Nupes, all those for whom its creation represented hope. I want to tell them: join us, come help us!” she declared in the press. Since the dissolution of Nupes at the end of November 2023, after a succession of internal crises and the reactions after the Hamas attack on Israel, the LFI MP has not stopped believing in the possibility of bringing together political parties again from the left.
Manon Aubry’s call to propose a common list to Europeans was, however, not heard by the communists, socialists and ecologists who each presented their head of list. Although each left-wing party is running in the next elections individually, Manon Aubry explained to 20 Minutes: “There will be a list of the popular union on June 9 which will defend the program, the spirit, the strategy of the Nupes and it is the one that all of rebellious France will support. Because it is the shortest path to building an alternative to the Bardella – Attal duo. And because there is urgency in the face of the extreme right which is at the gates of power everywhere in Europe.” In her program, Manon Aubry firstly defends a “clear break with liberal Europe”. According to her, the European Union “remains addicted to free trade, austerity and the commodification of everything.” She also announced to the media that the list for the elections should be revealed “at the beginning of March” and “in its entirety”.
In the 2019 European elections, Manon Aubry received 6.8% of the votes. According to the site Tout l’Europe.eu which offers the cumulative results of more than twenty polls carried out for different media between May 2023 and February 2024, LFI currently obtains 7% of voting intentions. The graph produced by the site shows that the voting intentions of La France Insoumise have decreased since May 2023 when they amounted to 10%. It was in December 2024 that intentions fell sharply to reach 7%. The graph reveals that the RN comes first followed by Renaissance. LFI is neck and neck with two other left-wing parties for third place, namely the Socialist Party which has accumulated between 9% and 10% since but 2023 and Europe Ecologie Les Verts which has obtained 8% of voting intentions since December.
