France's allied left seeks lower retirement age, wealth tax on rich

France's allied left seeks lower retirement age, wealth tax on rich

France's leftwing parties want to lower the retirement age, link salaries to inflation and introduce a wealth tax for the rich, leaders of a newly agreed alliance that spans from the hard left to the Socialists and Greens said on Friday.

The parties set aside differences to strike a deal late on Thursday ahead of a parliamentary election that President Emmanuel Macron unexpectedly called for June 30 and July 7 after his centrist party suffered a bruising defeat in Sunday's European Parliament elections.

"Emmanuel Macron won't have a majority," Greens leader Marine Tondelier told a new conference.

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"It's either the far right or us," she said, urging leftwing voters to back the new alliance, which gathers the Socialists, Greens, Communists, and hard-left Unbowed France (LFI) in an alliance dubbed the "Popular Front."

Opinion polls show that the leftist alliance is unlikely to win the election.

Tondelier said a top priority for the group would be to scrap Macron's very unpopular pension reform. Other measures would include increasing the minimum wage, introducing a wealth tax, boosting measures to fight climate change, and reforming the European Union's agriculture policy.

The leftist bloc worked together during the last parliamentary election campaign in 2022 but a leadership struggle and policy differences - including over the Gaza war - led to the alliance's effective collapse.