TOULOUSE, France — The prospect of the hard-left France Unbowed party taking control of Toulouse, France’s fourth-largest city and home to Europe’s best-known airplane maker, is putting industry on edge.
It’s not just that a win in the second round of local elections Sunday could give the party’s anticapitalist leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a major boost ahead of next year’s presidential election. That’s a concern for later.
The immediate fear is that if France Unbowed makes history here — the party has never come close to controlling such a big metropolis — it will heap taxes on local icons like Airbus to pay for a generous manifesto that includes water subsidies, free public transport for residents under 26 years old, and free school meals and educational supplies.
“I’m concerned it will jeopardize plans for new firms and factories to open in Toulouse, including the future prospects of Airbus,” said Pierre-Olivier Nau, the president of the employers’ lobby MEDEF in the Haute-Garonne department, which includes Toulouse.
Nau also worries that the hard left’s opposition to adding a high-speed rail connection between Bordeaux and Toulouse, due to cost at least €14 billion, will harm businesses that have been expecting it a long time. France Unbowed’s mayoral hopeful argues the project will damage the environment and push up rents in Toulouse by attracting commuters or remote workers from other cities with higher salaries.
A tight race
MEDEF and other business lobbies are now scrambling to react, given France Unbowed was never expected to get this close to power in Toulouse.
Its candidate, lawmaker François Piquemal, was polling behind his Socialist Party rival François Briançon in the run-up to the first round of the vote last Sunday. The Socialist leadership had vowed not to work with the hard left after the torrent of criticism unleashed against Mélenchon following accusations of antisemitic behavior and his unapologetic reaction to the death of a far-right activist.
So Piquemal’s second-place finish and his quickly formed alliance with Briançon to topple the longtime center-right mayor, Jean-Luc Moudenc, came as a surprise.
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The runoff is expected to be close. A poll released Thursday showed Moudenc winning by just two points in the second round, within the margin of error.
Two local employers’ lobbies recently slammed the hard left’s plans for Toulouse, and a group of 350 local celebrities, including rugby luminaries and business owners, signed an open letter calling on citizens to vote against France Unbowed.
“A lot of business projects have been put on hold,” said Nau.
Piquemal says this is scaremongering. The 41-year-old former teacher denied he will raise taxes and downplayed talk among business leaders that Airbus, the region’s dominant employer responsible for more than 200,000 direct and indirect jobs, would reduce investments or shift facilities if he were elected. Airbus declined a request for comment.
“Moudenc’s policies, but also [President Emmanuel] Macron’s policies, have worsened living conditions in Toulouse,” Piquemal told reporters in Toulouse on Thursday.
“We are the ones who support jobs, we support companies,” he added. “We are the ones defending small shop owners against big corporations.”
A soft-spoken man with a light beard and warm manner, Piquemal is characteristic of the new generation of radical left activists in France. He’s just as comfortable discussing toxic masculinity and making videos on TikTok as he is campaigning for rent controls or against Israel’s war in Gaza. He was aboard the so-called Freedom Flotilla with Greta Thunberg and MEP Rima Hassan, carrying aid to Gaza before they were all arrested by Israeli forces.
Piquemal, however, is much more understated than his party’s flamethrowing leader. But he’s benefiting from the success of Mélenchon’s adversarial approach to politics.
France Unbowed is trying to establish itself as the ultimate anti-establishment party ahead of what is expected to be a showdown with the far right in next year’s presidential election. Most polls show Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella’s party, the National Rally, is currently the favorite in the race for the Elysée.
“France Unbowed is the most solid, the best-placed to build a barrage against the far right,” said Ismael Youssouf-Huard, a France Unbowed activist and candidate for the Toulouse city council.
“Mélenchon is the sensible choice against the National Rally,” he said.
Results in the first round of voting have gone some way toward validating Mélenchon’s provocative approach. France Unbowed won the poor, diverse city of Saint-Denis in the Paris suburbs outright in the first round and is on track to score the mayor’s job in the industrial northeastern city of Roubaix.
The election in Toulouse is seen as a major test case for Mélenchon ahead of the 2027 presidential election. Can he and his party confirm its leadership role on the left ahead of the presidential election or will more moderate voters, turned off by the hard left’s radicalism, flock toward the opposition?
‘Are you ready for Sunday?’
At a market squashed between a burnt-out drug dealers’ den and a tower block in the Reynerie neighborhood, Piquemal is trying to get people to vote.
“Are you ready for Sunday?” he asked, as he handed out leaflets. “You need to go and vote.”
In the Reynerie market, shoppers are pleased to see him.
“I’m so happy he did well in the first round,” said Claude Compas, a retired special education teacher.
But some voters are worried about the prospect of the far left running the city.
“They say they’ll give free public transport to the youth, but nothing’s free,” said retiree Abdallah Taberkokt. “Who’s going to pay? We are.”
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Piquemal was generally warmly received — little surprise considering Reynerie swung heavily for him in the first round of the vote.
Still, Piquemal thought there was more excitement than usual in his core constituencies. He said he was harnessing “greater momentum” than during the last local election six years ago, when Moudenc narrowly defeated a more moderate candidate backed by a united left.
Piquemal’s supporters believe their champion will pave the way for a unified left, despite the fact that the first round of voting exposed deep divisions nationally over local alliances with Mélenchon and the hard left.
“These local elections are going to make history,” said Thibaut Cazal, a candidate for councilor alongside Piquemal. “It’ll show that left-wing families can be reconciled.”
France Unbowed may still fall short in Toulouse. But even if it does, the party will have proved that it cannot be ignored ahead of the big presidential showdown in 2027.