Quite a symbol!
Jean-Luc Mélenchon will soon offer his movement a new logo integrating the original “phi”… a drop of water.
Because, for the rebels as for the whole of the left, water becomes a political object in its own right.
Not only a natural element that must be cleaned up but, for environmentalists as well as for rebels and socialists, a key element of their project.
Like work, redistribution or ownership of the means of production.
A few months before the presidential election, candidates, officials or prospective, are now making water a "land of conquest".
“Water is and will be one of the common threads of all our policy, insists Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of La France insoumise.
Water is the heart of our fight for the ecological and social Republic.
"The rebels will also soon install in the National Assembly - within the framework of the annual" drawing rights "reserved for each parliamentary group - a commission of inquiry relating to the" control of water resources by private interests and its consequences ”, chaired by Mathilde Panot.
This cross-party commission is expected to submit its report in July.
An ideal timing at a time when Veolia and Suez, the two French multinationals in the sector, have embarked on a spectacular stock market battle.
“After the commodification of water, we are witnessing its financialization!
It is urgent to create a human right to water, ”launches the member for Val-de-Marne.
"Water must change its status and become a public good"
A concern shared by environmentalists.
Last fall, in Deux-Sèvres, Yannick Jadot, Mélenchon and the anti-globalist José Bové, found themselves united in the same fight, to block the "basins", these above ground water reservoirs intended for agricultural irrigation.
“It's unbearable to want to divide environmentalists and peasants.
But it is true that water is a major factor in our project, says the environmental MEP.
Water must change its status and become a public good.
Its protection must determine its uses.
Irrigation must be conditioned on water resources and the management of water must be entrusted to municipal authorities.
"
In the cities, the new mayors, Greens or Socialists, were quick to vote for the liquidation of private concessions.
And this, on the model of Grenoble where, more than twenty years ago, after a scandal that had splashed the then RPR mayor, Alain Carignon, the city had returned to its roots by re-municipalizing water.
At the Metropolis of Bordeaux, it is Suez which, from January 2023, will have to turn off the taps.
After more than seventy-three years of right-wing rule, the new socialist and environmental allies voted last December to create a public water management authority.
The new majority is full of praise for this strategic change.
“Water is a vital natural resource but it can be increasingly scarce.
We have a climate change which requires us to have full control over our water policy, ”distils the ecologist Sylvie Cassou-Schotte, vice-president of Bordeaux Métropole.
For Anne Hidalgo, water is also that of the Seine
True to his campaign promise, Bruno Bernard, the new green president of the metropolis of Lyon, will also take control of the management of his drinking water.
This time it is the Veolia group that will suffer.
The objective of the new team: better “preservation of the resource” as well as “social and solidarity pricing so that the first cubic meters are free for the most vulnerable.
"
More than ten years after the left, led by Bertrand Delanoë, had regained control of the distribution of water in the capital, Anne Hidalgo too, has made the Water of Paris control, an argument of her municipal campaign.
“Water, like air, public space, or the Internet, belongs to us all,” insisted the city councilor, who has since been re-elected.
For Anne Hidalgo, water is also that of the Seine which will be, according to her entourage, "one of the linchpins of the 2024 Olympic Games."
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The goal of the mayor?
Make the river a "swimmable" axis, from Paris to Le Havre, thanks to decontaminated water and banks reserved for pedestrians and bicycles, from the capital to the estuary.
The probable socialist presidential candidate went to Rouen on Thursday to discuss this project with the new socialist mayor, but also the former Prime Minister and mayor of Havre Edouard Philippe.