The Left in Europe - Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung

Fig. 2: Results of left-wing parties in the European elections (in %):
1979 1984 1989 1994 1999 2004
LSAP 21.64 29.93 25.45 24.80 23.58 22.09
SDP 7.00
PSI 2.56
Greng 6.08 10.46 10.93 1.07 15.02
GLA 1.83
KPL 5.00 4.08 4.71 1.63
1.17
2.77
DL 1.69
NL 0.9
GRAL 8.6
LCR/RSP 5.2 3.8 6.1
3414 4309 4209 3826 3881 3997
GRAL: Green Radical Alliance; LCR/RSP: Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire/Revolutionary Socialist
Party; chart: http://dev.ulb.ac.be/cevipol/fr/elections_luxembourg_europeennes_2004.html, accessed on
2.2.2009. 17
European success and local defeat
Luxemburg
On 10 July 2005 the Luxembourgers voted in a referendum on the Treaty
Establishing a Constitution for Europe. As in France and The Netherlands,
the degree of rejection was highest in the geographical and socio-cultural
strongholds of The Left. For The Left and the KPL this was the moment to
put the 2004 election defeat behind them and canvas for a No to the draft
constitution. They did this with such success that a parliamentary report of
the “Left of The Left” later stated that for long stretches they had set the
agenda of the campaign. Even if the influence of The Left should not be
overestimated, it is significant that in all the southern towns where the Left
gained seats in the 1999 local elections and which had a traditional
working-class character, there was a majority against the Constitution
17 The two tables must be qualified as follows: As Luxembourg’s electoral system is based on panachage
and accumulation, until a few years ago no votes were measured in percent. For the present
publication, however, such a table seemed to me important. At the same time deviations due to the different
numbers of votes in different constituencies are very hard to take into account, so that an errorfree
overview would not be possible without a major statistical effort.
38