"When one is so designated as the opponent, it is because one is considered as the alternative". The national secretary of Europe Ecologie les Verts (EELV), Julien Bayou, prefers to have a positive vision of the critics and the names of birds whose right-wing candidates dress up environmentalists in several big cities. Whether they present themselves in their name or allied with other left forces, the Greens are now the main enemy a few days before the second round of municipal elections scheduled for June 28.
This Sunday, we heard, in a report broadcast on France 5, a candidate Les Républicains à Lyon calling environmental voters "assholes".
After the insult from @gerardcollomb last May, last night on @ France5tv it is Christophe Marguin, running mate of @p_blache and supported by the current mayor of Lyon and @YCUCHERAT who treats environmental voters as "assholes". Worse and worse the right at # Municipales2020! https://t.co/YNbJTN06pn pic.twitter.com/3jImwS3VBc
- Paul Boucaud (@BoucaudPaul) June 22, 2020Three days earlier, the leader of the right in Lille called to vote for the socialist Martine Aubry, the ecologists being in his eyes "crazy", "madmen" or "intellectual terrorists". "Behind a nice showcase hide dark forces" also exclaimed the mayor of Toulouse, Jean-Luc Moudenc, vying for a new mandate against an alliance of the Greens and the rebellious. "All of this shows a kind of excitement that could be laughable if we did not fall into insults," asserts this Tuesday Julien Bayou with the Parisian.
Head of environmental list in 121 of the 251 largest cities
The fear for these right candidates? That environmental candidates prevail in certain large cities during the second round, after the "green push" in the first. 35% of the votes in Bordeaux (where the boss of EELV visited this Tuesday), 30% in Lyon, 24.3% in Lille, 23.4% in Marseille… Scores that can give the ecologists hope for a victory . For the moment, among the big cities, only Grenoble is headed by one of them, Eric Piolle, who has a good chance of being re-elected on Sunday.
In other places, like in Paris, the environmentalists arrived further behind on March 15, but they rallied the socialists during the interval between the two towers. What places them, within a union of the left which they do not lead, in situation of favorite or, at least, serious outsider.
In total, in the first round of these 2020 municipal elections, environmentalists presented a top of the list in 121 of the 251 cities with more than 30,000 inhabitants, almost twice as many as in 2014, according to an analysis note by the Foundation of political ecology published on May 26. They had left autonomously in 78 of these communes, and they had led an alliance in the 43 others.
Pending announcements from Macron
“The 2019 European elections completely changed the situation. They obtained 13.5% (against 9% in 2014, editor's note) , but they mostly came first among the political forces of the left, "said political scientist Daniel Boy, specialist in environmentalists.
The political context, marked in particular by the climate emergency, can also benefit them. The citizens' convention for the climate has just given its conclusions and Emmanuel Macron is supposed to receive a delegation of its members the day after the second round, before announcing possible new measures on ecology.
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For Julien Bayou's predecessor at the head of EELV, David Cormand, the critics who target environmentalists are linked to this greater political weight. "We were bearable on the condition that we were only substitutes ...", he judges.
"A success only if they succeed in conquering cities"
Faced with the Greens, in many cities such as Strasbourg, Lyon, Bordeaux, and even Tours, the candidate for La République en Marche preferred to get along with the right rather than the left. This was the case in 76 of the 296 municipalities of 9,000 inhabitants affected by a second round (with the left in 43 other cities). Alliances that Julien Bayou calls "anti-climate coalitions, which serve only to block environmentalists".
Rest for the Greens to transform the test next Sunday. Experience has also accustomed them to disappointments. And as researchers Florent Gougou and Simon Persico, from the Foundation for Political Ecology point out, "these municipalities will only be successful if they succeed in conquering cities".
