Occitan Nation Party, European elections 2019

The Occitan Nation Party and the European elections

      The Occitan Nation Party recalls that its fundamental objective is the creation one day of a sovereign Occitan federal state, that would be a member of the European Union and the United Nations.

     It calls right now for the federalization of the French Republic to respect cultural and linguistic identities and for the continuation of a reasonable, democratic European construction that would also take these identities better into account.

     After examining the programmes of the lists for the European elections to be held in France on 26 May next, it notes that only those of the European Federalist Party (EFP) and Europe Ecology the Greens (EELV) contain elements that seem to go in this direction. It regrets that this is too little.

     The EFP includes representatives of Breton and Alsatian parties and movements on its list. It wishes to protect the diversity of national and regional languages, but it does not propose any institutional tools for the peoples who carry these languages and does not criticize either the current regional division or the return to a single district for this election.

     EELV includes on its list representatives of autonomist parties that are members of Regions and People in Solidarity (RPS), in particular Corsican François Alfonsi, a former European deputy. They are in favour of France's ratification of the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages, which does not commit them much, nor do they propose any institutional tools for the peoples who speak these languages, nor do they criticize the current regional division or the return to a single constituency for this election. On the other hand, the polls give François Alfonsi, who is in 9th position, little chance of being elected. Already in 2014, when he was the only RPS MEP elected in 2009 on an EELV list, they had refused him a position allowing him to be re-elected. It is clear that, for EELV, what they call "regionalism" is not a priority.

     Consequently, the Occitan Nation Party calls for giving priority to an "Occitània liura" vote, i.e. an invalid or blank vote or to abstention.

     Nevertheless,  it would consider as a "less bad choice" a vote for the European Federalist Party or a vote for EELV in the slim hope that François Alfonsi would be elected. Our opposition to Emmanuel Macron must not lead to the worst-choice: a vote for the far-right National Gathering or another Jacobinist and French sovereignist list.

Occitania, European elections 2019