Manuel Bompard (French: [manɥɛl bɔ̃paʁ] ; born 30 March 1986) is a French politician who has represented the 4th constituency of the Bouches-du-Rhône department in the National Assembly since 2022.
A member of La France Insoumise (LFI), he served as a Member of the European Parliament from 2019 to 2022.
Manuel Bompard was the campaign director of Jean-Luc Mélenchon for the 2017 presidential election and the 2022 presidential election.
In 2023, Jean-Luc Mélenchon appointed him coordinator of La France Insoumise. While Bompard is technically leader of the party, he only manages day-to-day affairs. Melenchon remains the de facto leader.
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Early life and education
Manuel Bompard was born in 1986 in Firminy, Loire. He grew up in Drôme. His father is a computer scientist, then a farmer, his mother is a public servant in the housing sector.
He graduated from ENSIMAG's engineering school in Grenoble. He was awarded a doctorate in mathematics in 2011, having defended a thesis of applied mathematics in aeronautics at the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis. He worked in a startup specialised in machine learning in Ramonville-Saint-Agne, Haute-Garonne.
Left Party
Bompard entered politics at the age of 19 during the movement in opposition to the European Constitutional Treaty in 2005 and against the First Employment Contract (CPE) in 2006.
He became a founding member of the Left Party (PG) in 2009 and became its national secretary in 2010. In 2012, he was part of the events team for Jean-Luc Mélenchon's presidential election campaign.
Bompard succeeded François Delapierre as Jean-Luc Mélenchon's campaign manager for the 2014 European elections in the South-West constituency.
He stood in the 2015 departmental elections in Haute-Garonne in the Toulouse-5 constituency, alongside Dagmara Szlagor of EELV. They obtained 15.41% of the votes cast, but only 6.55% of those registered, which meant that they were unable to reach the second round (12.5% of those registered being required).
La France Insoumise
Bompard then became Jean-Luc Mélenchon's campaign manager for the 2017 presidential election, on behalf of La France Insoumise (LFI). In particular, he organised several key events in the campaign: the October 2016 convention in Lille, the march on 18 March 2017 between Place de la Bastille and Place de la République, the digital campaign platform and Mélenchon's hologram at an Aubervilliers rally.
Bompard was a candidate in the 2017 legislative election in Haute-Garonne's 9th constituency, for LFI, with Laure Tachoires as his running mate. He came second in the first round with 18.91% of the vote and was defeated in the second round with 47.67% of the vote by Sandrine Mörch of La République en marche.
In the spring of 2018, Bompard took part in the electoral committee responsible for evaluating and selecting the candidacies of activists wishing to appear on the list for the 2019 European election. At the end of this process, he was ranked first among the male candidates and the possibility was raised that he could head the list. As part of the composition of this list of candidates, he was strongly criticised by one of the 32 members of the party committee for locking in, ‘petty arrangements between friends’ and control over eligible positions, citing in particular the case of Sarah Soilihi, who was allegedly 'ousted' from the ‘top four’ candidates and therefore wished to be removed from the list. Another member removed from the list, Georges Kuzmanovic, criticised Bompard for being both judge and jury in the composition of the list, in a context where several ideological lines (a 'sovereignist' one and a 'leftist' one) seemed to clash within LFI, which Manuel Bompard denied.
In 2021, he was again appointed Mélenchon's campaign manager for the 2022 presidential election.
Bompard left the leadership of the Left Party in July 2018 to devote himself to his role as spokesperson for La France Insoumise and to the European election campaign. Initially approached to lead the LFI list for the 2019 European election, he ended up in second place on the list of candidates (behind Manon Aubry). The LFI list obtained 6.3% of the vote, which was below the voting intentions recorded by IFOP, which had never fallen below 7%. This score gave LFI six MEP seats. At the European Parliament, Bompard became the representative of the LFI delegation.
Conviction for rebellion
On 16 October 2018, as part of preliminary investigations into Mélenchon's 2017 campaign finances and alleged fictitious employment at the European Parliament, a search was carried out by the French Central Office for Combating Corruption and Financial and Tax Offences at the headquarters of La France Insoumise. Bompard, alongside Mélenchon, was involved in the exchanges with the police. A correctional trial was held in Bobigny in September 2019 for ‘acts of intimidation against judicial authority, rebellion and provocation’. On 9 December 2019, he was sentenced to a €7,000 fine.
Targeting by a far-right website
On 2 October 2023, Bompard co-signed an article in L'Humanité defending freedom of information, and the following day was included on the far-right website Reseau-libre.org's ‘list of candidates for a bullet in the back of the head’.