Nicolas Hulot has never been a member of Europe Ecologie-Les Verts (EELV). This is the first remark that bursts when we question the environmentalists on the accusations of rape, assault and sexual harassment weighing on the one who could have, however, been their candidate for the presidential election of 2012 if he had won. the primary against Eva Joly. Once this observation has been made, the message is clear at EELV, for Yannick Jadot, who praised their “Immense courage”, as for Sandrine Rousseau and the party leadership: support and respect for the women who spoke in the “Special Envoy” survey broadcast Thursday, November 25 on France 2.
“It’s not my face, I’ve never been around him”, summarizes Julien Bayou, national secretary of EELV. Nicolas Hulot has long been an ambiguous personality, too independent of the party to be praised, too popular in public opinion to be despised by the executives of political ecology. Since 2018, when the magazine’s survey Ebdo came out, while several dailies were carrying out their own investigations, the decision was taken not to invite him any more, nor to highlight him. “We learn a lot of things”, remembers Sandra Regol, number two of EELV. Already in 2011, relates the environmentalist, she had been warned. Local manager in Strasbourg during the primary, she receives Nicolas Hulot. People around him say to “Be careful not to be too nice to him, to keep his distance”. “What I understand at that time is that it is a big heavy dredger, it is only at the time of the 2018 survey that I make the link”, she explains.
Before #metoo
This is a little what also relates the environmental activist Claire Nouvian in “Special Envoy”, with the difference that these warnings, uttered in 2008, were followed, according to her, years later, by a passage to the act, including an attempted kiss.
At EELV, there is the idea that before 2018, and in particular during the 2011 primary, the clue was less clear, at a time when the #metoo movement had not yet freed the floor. “In 2018, he is questioned, some languages are loosened, we have greater attention, without there being, to my knowledge, any report naming him” within the party, explains Julien Bayou, who confides to have discovered quite recently that public testimonies, like that of the former environmental activist Pauline Lavaud, concerned facts dating back to the 2011 primary.
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