After 15 years as a European deputy, the former environmentalist candidate for the 2022 presidential election, Yannick Jadot, is making his return to the national political arena by becoming a senator from Paris, convinced that he is “still useful to political ecology and political life.
At 56, this tall, dark-haired man with blue eyes now wants to act nationally so that “France is up to the challenge of climate change”.
“Disappointed” by his result in the 2022 presidential election (4.6%), he asked himself: “did I still have the desire and the energy”, after a “particularly frustrating” campaign, where “you’re working your butt off for 18 hours a day, and the thing is, you never seem to get it.”
But faced with a moment “where humanity is confronted with the challenge of its survival”, “I thought that I was still useful to political ecology and political life”, he explains to the AFP.
Could this Senate election be a springboard for a candidacy for mayor of Paris, an intention attributed to him by his detractors? He kicks in: “It’s a senatorial election, to be a senator.”
This supporter of an autonomous environmentalist list in the European elections in June has a few victories to his credit in Brussels: in 2009, during his first mandate alongside Daniel Cohn-Bendit, “our slogan was the green deal. Ten years later, it has become the agenda of the European Union,” he says happily.
Among the battles of which he is proud, his fight against the CETA free trade agreement between the EU and Canada and against that with Mercosur, the ban on products resulting from forced labor, the carbon tax at borders or the ban on electric fishing in Europe.
Yannick Jadot now intends to make his powerful voice heard in the upper house, in particular to “defend proportional representation” in the next legislative election or “on the thermal insulation of buildings” which combines “health, purchasing power and economic activity” according to him.
“The ecology that I want to promote is an ecology that wants to convince those who doubt, not those who are already convinced,” insists the elected official, a follower of the “culture of compromise” so dear to the upper house.
But Yannick Jadot is not unanimous in his party: his participation in the police demonstration in front of the National Assembly in 2021 had horrified many historical activists.
Known to be far from the EELV line on the economy and certain societal issues, he recently deplored Medina’s participation in the environmentalists’ summer days in Le Havre, and refuses to march against police violence.
A position far from that of the ecofeminist Sandrine Rousseau, follower of a more radical ecology, who had sharply criticized her presidential campaign.
“I have no problems with mobilizations, but with violence,” replies Yannick Jadot, not very favorable to Nupes, but who welcomes the PS-EELV-PCF list on which he was elected, and concedes that he union will be needed in the 2027 presidential election.
For this native of Aisne, obtaining the nomination in Paris was not easy, despite 40 years spent in the capital. But he came first after a “close” vote.
“He is a former presidential candidate,” says national secretary Marine Tondelier.
“Yannick for years, he played his own part,” admits an elected environmentalist, “but since the presidential campaign, he has become more collective.”
For Cyrielle Chatelain, the head of the environmentalist deputies, “he will have a strong voice in the Senate, he will give more visibility to the group”.
A close friend of the senatorial right thinks that “Jadot will bring order to the environmentalist group. (…) He’s a reasonable guy, that might improve things.”
It’s a bit quick to forget that the man who cut his teeth in several NGOs, participated in the Grenelle de l’environnement in 2007 and directed Greenpeace France’s campaigns for seven years, is also a fan of media stunts.
He was thus condemned for “undermining the superior interests of the Nation” for having entered the port of the National Navy’s nuclear missile submarines in the harbor of Brest in 2005, during a Greenpeace operation.
09/24/2023 21:07:38 – Paris (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
