The PS Secretary General said this Monday that he was “very happy” with the results of the elections in France, as “the far right has been stopped”, considering that the idea of a “structural turn” to the right in Europe .
At the end of a visit to a school in Vila de Rei, Castelo Branco, during the parliamentary elections, Pedro Nuno Santos of the PS told journalists that in Portugal there is “no left front” and that this is the “French reality”, since each country has its own “adequate response to the national reality”.
The Socialist leader said he was “very pleased with the results” of Sunday’s elections in France.
“The far right has been stopped. A few days ago, almost all of us were convinced that the far right would win. That is not the case. They have suffered a defeat,” he stressed.
For Pedro Nuno Santos, it is “very important” that after the elections in France it became clear “that the idea that Europe has turned to the right, that this is a structural turn, is false.”
“The right was blocked in the United Kingdom and the right was blocked in France, and therefore the question of a structural and definitive turn to the right does not correspond to the recent reality of two electoral acts in the two largest countries on the European continent,” he noted.
Another very important aspect of these elections, according to the PS leader, is that it was the young people who gave “victory to the left in order to defeat the far right.”
“So the ingrained idea of a structural shift of youth to the right is also at odds with what happened in France, where youth clearly and unequivocally gave victory to the left,” he said.
Pedro Nuno Santos also asked for a little seriousness when analysing the results in France and not to continue to say that the far right “had more votes, when in fact this is due to the fact that other candidates withdrew.”
In the second round of elections held on Sunday, the left-wing coalition (New Popular Front) won between 177 and 198 seats in the National Assembly, while French President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance came in second with 152 to 169 seats.
The far-right National Union, which led in the first round, was in third place on Sunday, with between 135 and 143 deputies.