Two years before the next municipal elections, this is a warning shot. In large cities led by environmentalist mayors, the score of their political family in the European elections is not the most reassuring. Everywhere, it lost around ten points between the 2019 election and that of Sunday June 9: around 20% in 2019, the list led by Marie Toussaint only brought together one in ten voters in Lyon (11.2% ), in Bordeaux (10.9%), Strasbourg (9%) or Grenoble (12.9%). In Annecy, it only collected 8.3% compared to 19.3% in 2019.
Certainly, this is double what Europe Ecologie-Les Verts (EELV) obtained at the national level (5.5%). Moreover, “we resist the extreme right a little better than elsewhere”, rejoices Emmanuel Denis, mayor (EELV) of Tours. In Bordeaux, Pierre Hurmic is satisfied that the National Rally came fourth in his city on Sunday. “From Montaigne to the Girondins of the French Revolution, Bordeaux is a humanist land of resistance to extremists”, he notes. The reality is nevertheless harsh for these city councilors, who know they are expected around the corner. Because the comparison with the 2020 municipal elections is even more severe, since they often exceeded 30%. In Grenoble, Eric Piolle even obtained 46.7% of the votes in the first round.
As the 2019 European elections foreshadowed the green wave of 2020, do Sunday’s results portend a gray future for the Greens? ” Caution “advises Thierry Dominici, lecturer at the University of Bordeaux. “The municipal success of 2020he said, can be explained in particular by the fact that the two components of political ecology had then managed to come together. »
The “institutional ecology” (EELV, Génération Ecologie or Cap21) then rallied, in the constitution of the lists, a part of the “radical ecology”, that is to say the representatives of civil society and the activists , who advocate a total paradigm shift. This strategy “attracted activists who stood aside”leading to the emergence of a hybrid political ecology, indicates Mr. Dominici.
“The left-wing electorate does not belong to any party”
But these municipalities, made up of a large number of civil society activists, were confronted with the reality of daily management. “Very quickly became institutional forces, they gradually lost this electorate, which became tired”, underlines Mr. Dominici. For elected officials, this is a permanent issue: “This is our crest: keeping the link with the activists while embodying credible managementdescribes Léonore Moncond’huy, mayor (Les Ecologistes) of Poitiers. I am not challenged by the radical environmentalist fringe. »
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