Socialist Party (France)
사회당 (프랑스)
A French social-democratic and pro-European party, founded in 1969 in place of the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) and taken over by François Mitterrand at the Epinay Congress of 1971. It first came to power with Mitterrand's election as president in 1981, but in 1983, to stay in the European Monetary System, it abandoned nationalisation and expansion for austerity. For decades it was the largest party of the Fifth Republic's left. It is a different party from Jean Jaurès's French Socialist Party of 1902–1905.
In depth
At the Alfortville Congress of 1969 the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) was replaced by the Socialist Party, joined by clubs close to Pierre Mendès-France and Jean Poperen's left-wing republican groups. The Issy-les-Moulineaux Congress elected Alain Savary First Secretary with the support of Guy Mollet. Two years later, at the Epinay Congress of 1971, François Mitterrand's Convention of Republican Institutions joined the party, and Mitterrand defeated the Savary-Mollet duo by proposing an electoral programme with the Communists and took the lead. The fist and rose became its new emblem, and in 1972 it signed the Common Programme with the French Communist Party and the Radical Party of the Left. At the end of 1974 part of the Unified Socialist Party, including Michel Rocard, joined, and in the 1978 legislative election the Socialists outpolled the Communists for the first time since 1936.
When Mitterrand defeated Valéry Giscard d'Estaing for the presidency in 1981, he dissolved the National Assembly and the Socialists won an absolute majority for the first time. Prime Minister Pierre Mauroy nationalised the banks, the insurance industry and the defence industries in accordance with the Common Programme, and reforms followed: higher wages, the 39-hour week, the abolition of the death penalty and a wealth tax. But as early as 1982 Mitterrand faced a choice between keeping France in the European Monetary System and pursuing his socialist reforms, and he chose the former. In 1984, under Prime Minister Laurent Fabius, further socialist measures were clearly abandoned and the Communist ministers resigned. From 1983 monetary and fiscal restraint was the essential policy orientation of the Mitterrand presidency.
The party lost its majority in 1986, forcing cohabitation with Jacques Chirac, and Mitterrand was re-elected in 1988. Lionel Jospin led a Plural Left government from 1997 to 2002, and François Hollande was elected president in 2012. But squeezed between Emmanuel Macron and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, its candidate Benoît Hamon came fifth in the 2017 presidential election and the party fell to fourth place in the legislative election that year. Membership fell from 173,486 in 2012 to 22,000 in 2021. Jacques Delors, president of the European Commission, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the IMF, and Pascal Lamy, director-general of the WTO, all came from the party.