Six months before the senatorial elections, Parisian ecologists have launched an activist consultation to choose their candidates. The Senate, an institution often considered conservative, regains a certain attractiveness. But behind the scenes, these desires to change the Senate are smiling.
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The discussions on pensions are not for nothing: the Senate has again become in recent months a visible link in our parliamentary system. This noble institution, mostly on the right, known for its thick carpet, its largely masculine composition and over 60 years old, attracts new personalities. Politicians determined to bring in new subjects, in particular ecology and feminism.
The Senate as “a tool of revolution”?
A new playground for EELV? Parisian environmentalists can hope for two seats in the Senate. Nine men and five women are candidates in Paris for EELV. The activists have until Sunday 8 p.m. to decide between them, a purely advisory vote. Among these candidates, there are some known heads. The most popular: MEP Yannick Jadot or Paris councilor Alice Coffin.
Alice Coffin, feminist, figure of LGBT struggles, aims to make the Senate “a tool of revolution”. “It’s not intuitive”, she acknowledges. Nevertheless, the Parisian theorizes that on pensions as on basins, ecologists have placed themselves at the heart of social struggles. Struggles that she wants to import into the cozy corridors of the Senate. Alice Coffin says she wants to make the Senate “a new hype”, understand: a trendy place. In short, she dreams of shaking up the institution from the inside.
At first, the idea of having personalities like Alice Coffin in the Senate amused: “It would set the mood”, smiles a macronist senator. But the reality is that senators take it upon themselves to protect their hemicycle from the torments of the outside and from a form of brouhaha. We saw the difference with the Assembly during the debates on pension reform.
A less noisy but more effective Senate?
“In the Senate, we respect each other. We don’t insult each other, we work a lot”, deciphers Senator Laurence Rossignol. And the socialist to recall the very numerous reports carried out in the Senate, sometimes on subjects far from being conservative. She herself had worked on the issue of pornography.
A less noisy but more effective Senate: this is the message that the elected members of the upper house want to convey. Does this mean that a renewal of generation and practices is useless? An impossible modernization? In the Senate, some tell how newcomers often try to shake the coconut tree before melting into the mold. A metaphor even circulates at the Luxembourg Palace: “The Senate is like a jar of pickles. You put anything in the jar, after three months it becomes a pickle.”
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