Chosen as head of the list of the Socialist Party and the Place publique movement, Raphaël Glucksmann is in first position among the left-wing candidates for the European elections next June. Essayist, then politician, he started on the liberal side and subsequently turned to the left, strongly committed to the ecological emergency, but also the rise of populism. While he defends a vision of cosmopolitan France, a portrait of this hope carried by the PS for the next elections.
Born October 15, 1979 in Boulogne-Billancourt, Raphaël Glucksmann is the son of the philosopher André Glucksmann. He first studied at the Lamartine high school before joining a hypokhâgne literature prep course, then khâgne, at the Henri-IV high school. Between 1999 and 2003, he studied at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris and spent seven months in Algeria, as a journalist, at the generalist daily Le Soir d’Algérie. It was in March 2003, while he was still a student, that he founded, with around ten other people, with the help of his father and friends, the association Etudes sans frontières (ESF), which allowed, in September 2003, nine students from Chechnya to study in Parisian schools and universities.
In 2004, he directed the documentary Kill them all!, with David Hazan and Pierre Mézerette, which discusses France’s responsibility in the genocide of the Tutsi. The same year, he focused on the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in another documentary, co-directed with David Hazan. From 2006 to 2008, he became one of the contributors to the neoconservative magazine Le Meilleur des Mondes, a think tank founded by several pro-American sensibilities in France. Also in 2006, he was nominated by Liberal Alternative (AL) to become a candidate in the 2007 legislative elections in the fifth constituency of Paris.
In 2008, he was the advisor to Mikheil Saakashvili, president of Georgia between 2004 and 2013, whom he raised awareness of the issue of Georgia’s European integration. Five years later, he took his turn in Ukraine. At the start of the 2017 school year, he appeared on the airwaves of France Info and France Inter in the show Questions Politiques, then took over as editorial director of the Nouveau Magazine littéraire between December 2017 and the end of summer 2018.
It was also in 2018 that he collaborated in the creation of Place publique, designed to unify the left with a view to the 2019 European elections. On May 26, 2019, Raphaël Glucksmann was elected MEP while his list arrived in sixth position, with 6.2% of the votes and six elected officials.
In September 2023, Raphaël Glucksmann announced his candidacy for the 2024 European elections with the slogan “The fight continues” before being formalized as head of the PS list on February 1, 2024. At a meeting in Strasbourg, on Wednesday April 24, 2024, he is particularly virulent towards Emmanuel Macron’s European record, made of “setbacks” and “betrayals”.
He, as reported by Le Point, deplored his “strategic bankruptcy” against Vladimir Putin’s Russia by demanding, for Europe, “the means to defend itself”, in particular thanks to a European fund endowed with 100 billion euros. euros. He also accused the Macronie of “permanently serving as a stepping stone” to the far right, while the National Rally is leading the race in the polls with more than 30% of voting intentions.