An Existential Choice? France’s Communist Party Eyes Presidential Race 

PARIS - France’s once-powerful Communist Party is fielding its first presidential candidate in years for the 2022 elections — a choice some consider vital for its very survival. It's one of Western Europe’s last relevant Communist parties — whose latest move paradoxically risks further fracturing an already weakened French left.  

The French Communist Party’s presidential hopeful is Fabien Roussel, a former journalist with a reputation as a bon vivant and amateur fisherman, who has been at its helm since 2018. He got strong backing at a party meeting last weekend, although the movement’s base must still endorse his candidacy next month.   Announcing his run Sunday, Roussel said he wanted to offer the French people a program of hope — not only in defeating the coronavirus pandemic but also unemployment, poverty and inequality.    France’s century-old Communist party was once a major political force. In the 1970s, it was the country’s most powerful leftist party, with about 20% popular support. It also governed a raft of working-class towns around Paris nicknamed the Red Belt, with streets named after communist icons like Marx and Lenin.     Today, it’s a shadow of its former self — although it's among a handful of Communist parties across Europe with deputies in the European Parliament. Here in France, center- and far-right candidates have pierced the Paris-area “Red Belt” and the Communists now control just one French department.   The party’s last presidential hopeful, Marie-George Buffet, got less than 2% of the vote in 2007. Roussel was partly elected on his call for another run.