the difficulties of Marie Toussaint in a vote historically favorable to environmentalists

The list led by the MEP is only credited with 6 to 8% in the voting intention polls, a far cry from the scores achieved in the past during these elections.

The European elections represent, for environmentalists, an event that is close to their hearts. It’s their favorite election. Five years ago, in 2019, Yannick Jadot climbed to the third step of the podium with the excellent score of 13.5% of the votes. Ten years earlier, in 2009, Dany Cohn-Bendit had received more than 16% of the vote. If we go back another two decades, it was during the 1989 European elections that the Greens obtained their first significant national result, with 10.5% for the list led at the time by Antoine Waechter. Usually, a number of elements work in their favor: their resolutely pro-European and even federalist identity, the proportional voting system, the example of powerful sister parties like the German Grünen: that is to say if, on June 9, Marie Toussaint is playing big, set for the hour, it’s not going very well. EDITORIAL.

The head of the list of ecologists, guest of “Demain l’Europe” Friday April 5 on franceinfo, oscillates, according to the polls, between 6 and 8% of voting intentions, far behind Raphaël Glucksmann who could return the leadership to the left to the socialists. It must be said that environmentalists have accumulated handicaps. Resistant to the personalization of politics, they chose a head of the list unknown to the general public, lacking notoriety, and who is struggling to acquire it.

In recent months, environmentalists have also been more concerned about societal issues that are not very mobilizing, than about questions of purchasing power, immigration or security, which are at the forefront of French people’s concerns. Finally, they do not seek to capitalize on the experience of the mayors of the large cities conquered in 2020 – Strasbourg, Lyon, Bordeaux, etc. – elected officials who also stay away from the endless quarrels of the party apparatus.

Little weight for ecology in this campaign

On a European scale, the other Green parties also appear to be in decline. Since the start of the war in Ukraine, the environmental emergency has seemingly gone out of fashion, given the soaring prices of energy and food products. We saw this recently when peasant anger prompted governments, in France and elsewhere, to postpone or postpone many of their ecological commitments. As for Marie Toussaint’s supporters, we try to reassure ourselves by remembering that five years ago, it was in the very last days of the campaign that the Jadot list finally took off.