The minority motion “Le Souffle”, which won nearly 20% of the vote at the 2019 environmental congress, calls for an intermediate management to be put in place until the fall and the enlargement of the cell to negotiate with the other left-wing parties for the legislative elections.
Unsubdued France probably did not ask for so much. Whereas in Sunday newspaper, MP LFI Mathilde Panot affirms that “Jadot and Roussel must be accountable for their numerous attacks on Mélenchon”a “prior” according to her to any discussion for the legislative elections, now a spokesperson for Europe Ecologie-Les Verts is going in the same direction. In a letter addressed to his party, that Release was able to consult, Alain Coulombel, never stingy with criticisms against his own, act “failure” of the environmental campaign for the presidency and demands accountability from its leadership. “We cannot have such a bad result compared to our ambitions without our leaders questioning themselves”, he squeaks. As a reminder, the green candidate Yannick Jadot only obtained 4.63% of the vote. Far from the expected results.
So, in a contribution sent on the sidelines of the last Federal Council on April 16 in the name of its sensitivity, “the Breath” (the most left-wing fringe of the party, which obtained 20% of the votes at the 2019 congress), Coulombel analyzes this fiasco. He explains : “It was not theory that we lacked, but empathy. We did not know how to smile at France, remaining in the climatic incantation. Unfortunately, voters want answers to their current expectations, not answers to tomorrow’s challenges…”
Above all, the spokesperson believes that his camp “got the wrong opponent” by heavily charging Jean-Luc Mélenchon on his supposed acquaintances with Vladimir Poutine, “instead of focusing on [son] project and on the three dangers of Macron’s political project and those of the extreme right of Le Pen and Zemmour”. Result, according to him: “We are in very bad shape on the eve of the legislative elections. Our possibilities of alliance with La France Insoumise are weakened by our deliberate and repeated attacks against Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
Open the negotiating team for the legislative elections
So, to try to reach an agreement between the two parties all the same, the most left-wing fringe of the party has its own idea. An idea which consists in integrating into the team in charge of negotiating with the other formations a member of their sensitivity. “We are the most sensitive to wanting to reach an alliance and we are the closest to LFI so if we want things to work, he might be happy to integrate us into the system”, pleads Coulombel. According to him, the duo composed of Hélène Hardy and Léa Balage mandated by the party “seems questionable” because of their former or current positions. The first participated in the failure of the negotiations in Paca for the regional 2021, he explains. Which, according to him, would have had “consequences on our relations with LFI”. Regarding the second, the spokesperson believes that she cannot ethically negotiate for the legislative elections when she is herself a candidate in a Parisian constituency.
But above all, the current of Coulombel calls for an intermediate leadership to be put in place until the next party congress scheduled for the fall. “With such a failure, we cannot be satisfied with a status quo”he insists to Freed. Once again making the link with the upcoming legislative elections, he develops: “In view of the results [de la présidentielle], the legitimacy of the executive office seems to us to be undermined. How can we allow those who have led us into this impasse to be alone in charge of negotiations for the next electoral sequence?
Contacted, the party leadership regrets “a return to old practices which are not the greatest successes of ecologists”, alluding to the divisions that have plagued EE-LV’s history for so long. “We were used to there being more respect for the rules decided collectively”, laments Sandra Regol. Especially since the number 2 of the Greens ensures that all the decisions taken around the primary or the campaign of Yannick Jadot “have been taken collectively”.