Yannick Jadot, former head of the list of Europe Ecologie-Les Verts believes that the health crisis reinforces the legitimacy of the ecological vision of society.
How do you judge the action of the executive in managing this crisis?
YANNICK JADOT. We are in the “hard” of the pandemic. We must all be mobilized behind our caregivers and the actions taken by the government. The time for questions will come. It is crucial. And with it, the Parliament will have to regain its prerogatives of controlling the action of the State. I regret, however, that the executive does not bring all political forces together daily to ensure the essential national unity, to consolidate and reinforce the social acceptability of the measures implemented, to avoid bad controversies. It is time to get out of the infantilism in which those who govern us have held citizens for too long.
How would a more “ecological” behavior have avoided this health tragedy?
The diagnosis that we had established unfortunately turns out to be based on two major points. Globalization has gone too far, endangering our health and our ability to cope with such shocks. Viruses have always existed. This pandemic is no more a punishment of nature than the plague was a divine punishment. But it has been shown that deforestation, predation of wild species, industrial farming and soon the thawing of permafrost trigger and accelerate the spread of unknown and potentially very dangerous viruses.
For some environmentalists, this crisis confirms their model of "zero growth and mobility" ...
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What we are experiencing during this crisis is certainly not a model of ecological life. But if the post-coronavirus and the hundreds of billions of euros in public aid amount to saving the world today, with all its dysfunctions, then new disasters await us. It is obvious that we will have to produce, consume and move differently and limit the superfluous.
You are an MEP. What lessons should the European Union learn?
We must put an end to this globalization of free trade treaties based on social, environmental and fiscal dumping which destroys the essential and makes us dangerously vulnerable. With my colleagues, and in particular with Michel Barnier (Editor's note: negotiator of Brexit for the European Union) and Thierry Breton (Editor's note: European Commissioner for the internal market) , I am fighting on three fronts.
As Jacques Delors said on Sunday, lack of health and budgetary solidarity, Europe is in danger of death. The financial tools to deal with the 2008 crisis are no longer enough. Powerful fiscal tools are needed. And on this point, Emmanuel Macron, who defends with the Italians and the Spanish "corona bonds", that is to say European loans, is right. Angela Merkel's attitude of refusal is irresponsible. The reform of the CAP, the common agricultural policy, must more than ever privilege short circuits and stop this globalization of agriculture which is devastating for peasants, forests and biodiversity. Finally, it is urgent that Europe defend itself in matters of public procurement.
That is to say ?
In all strategic areas, the Union must encourage the emergence of European companies which guarantee our health, food, energy, digital and industrial sovereignty. It is also necessary that at the territorial level, public orders can legally favor local SMEs. What the United States is already doing.
And at the national level?
As at the European level, we will have to counter the withdrawal strategies, sometimes secession, invoked by the nationalists and the far right, from Trump, Poutine, Bolsonaro to Marine Le Pen. With this crisis, we ecologists have an increased responsibility, that of taking responsibility. Faced with the dangerous option of populism, faced with a liberal model which has been lost in the sands of globalization - even if it means making public services and all the trades that allow us to live today more precarious - the ecological path is the only legitimate. We must convince that with the lifeblood of our country we can repair society, respect and protect women, men and nature, and promote a resilient, innovative, powerful and just economy. That we are able to unite the French and mobilize them around a new hope, a united project which projects us more serenely into the future.
This means that environmentalists, historically anchored on the left, must open up in the center and on the right?
Rather than the Popular Front, I prefer to be inspired by the National Council of the Resistance, that is to say the largest possible gathering of all those who want to mobilize around the great essential transformations of our model.