The decision was expected and came quickly, as demanded by of the municipal elections. As the public rapporteur suggested on Wednesday, February 25, the Council of State, France’s highest administrative court, rejected on Friday, February 27, the appeal from La France Insoumise (LFI) against the Interior Ministry’s decision to classify the populist party as “far left” for the March elections.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s party had called Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez’s February 2 decision a political maneuver to remove LFI from the broader “left bloc,” where it had previously been grouped alongside the Socialists, Greens and Communists.

LFI is not “justified” in “maintaining” that its classification as far left “is tainted by a manifest error of assessment, nor that it could, in the specific circumstances, be considered likely to undermine the integrity of the vote,” the judges ruled. The highest administrative court had adopted a similar position regarding political labeling in March 2024, when it rejected the Rassemblement National (RN) appeal against its classification as “far right” in the categorization of candidates for the Sénat elections.

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