Jean-Luc Mélenchon (French: [ʒɑ̃ lyk melɑ̃ʃɔ̃] ; born 19 August 1951) 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 2012, 2017, and 2022). In 2022, he came within 1.2 percentage points of reaching the second round in France's two-round voting system.
After joining the Socialist Party (PS) in 1976, Mélenchon was successively elected a municipal councillor of Massy (1983) and general councillor of Essonne (1985). In 1986, he entered the Senate, to which he was reelected in 1995 and 2004. He also served as Minister for Vocational Education between 2000 and 2002 under Minister of National Education Jack Lang in the cohabitation government of Lionel Jospin. He was part of the left-wing of the PS until the Reims Congress of November 2008, when he left the party to found the Left Party with Marc Dolez, a member of the National Assembly. Mélenchon first served as party president before becoming party co-president alongside Martine Billard, a position he held until 2014. As co-president of the Left Party, he joined the electoral coalition of the Left Front before the 2009 European Parliament election in France; he was elected as a MEP in the South-West France constituency and reelected in 2014. He became the Left Front's candidate in the 2012 French presidential election, in which he came in fourth, receiving 11.1% of the first-round vote.
In February 2016, Mélenchon founded the party La France Insoumise (LFI or FI). He stood as a candidate in the 2017 French presidential election, again coming in fourth, with 19.6% of the first-round vote. He became a member of the National Assembly for LFI following the 2017 French legislative election, receiving 59.9% in the second round in the 4th constituency of Bouches-du-Rhône, located in Marseille (France's second-largest city). Mélenchon stood again under the LFI banner in the 2022 French presidential election, coming in third with 21.95% of the vote, just over one point short of qualifying for the second round. After this, he led the newly formed New Ecological and Social People's Union (NUPES) alliance of parties to a second-place performance in the 2022 French legislative election. LFI was confirmed as the largest party of the French left in the 2024 French legislative election, where the left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) achieved a plurality of seats and LFI was confirmed as the largest left-wing group in the National Assembly.
Source : Wikipedia
