“The government must apologize for its support” to Nicolas Hulot in 2018, at the time of the magazine’s revelations Ebdo, unveiling the rape complaint filed in 2008 by Pascale Mitterrand against the then minister of ecological transition, estimates Saturday, November 27 on franceinfo Sandra Regol, deputy national secretary of Europe Ecology-The Greens (EELV).
At the time of publication, “everybody [au gouvernement] says: ‘Move on, there is nothing to see’. Imagine the message sent to all women victims of sexual violence: ‘If you want to touch us, we will stand against you!’ “, asks Sandra Regol, who recalls that one of the current government ministers, Gerald Darmanin, is accused of rape. The investigating judge in charge of the investigation against the Minister of the Interior pronounced in September the end of the investigations without putting him in examination, directing the investigation towards a dismissal.
At the time, several members of the government officially supported Nicolas Hulot. Marlène Schiappa, then Secretary of State for Equality between Women and Men, criticizes, in a column published in the Sunday Newspaper, of “accusers of Nicolas Hulot” of “flout the word of women”. She describes it as “a charming and respectful man”.
Asked about this attitude of Marlène Schiappa, Sandra Regol believes that “could hold her superiors to account, who asked her to do so, and then her”. The deputy national secretary of EELV adds that “to question oneself about this loophole which consists in bringing [des reproches] on women close to the accused men “.
As for the Europe Ecology-Les Verts party, for which Nicolas Hulot wanted to run for the presidential election in 2011 (he was defeated by Eva Joly during a primary), Sandra Regol retorts that Nicolas Hulot “didn’t work with environmentalists, he was never a party member.” She also assures that as soon as the party learned of Nicolas Hulot’s suspicious actions towards women, “before the publication of the Ebdo magazine investigation, no one invited him on behalf of EELV.”