2023-07-10 05:07:00
The activists of Europe Ecologie-Les Verts designate during an internal vote on Monday July 10 their head of list for the European elections.
By IM with AFP EELV designates Monday, July 10 during an internal vote its head of the list for the European 2024. © MAXPPP Published on 07/10/2023 at 05:07
David Cormand or Marie Toussaint? The ecologists decide on Monday July 10 who will lead their list in the European elections in 2024. This internal vote in the Europe Ecologie-Les Verts party in fact confirms the choice to present an autonomous list in the election, definitively ruling out the prospect of a alliance with other left formations. EELV activists could also endorse the name change of the party, which would become more simply “The Ecologists”. A promise from the new national secretary Marine Tondelier.
Voting results are expected at a press conference at 10:30 a.m.
While La France insoumise continues to try to convince its partners in the Nupes coalition of the need for a common list for European women, Marine Tondelier has already repeatedly rejected this hypothesis.
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No real campaign
Up-to-date party members – 11,106 at the last count – were invited to vote online from Friday 6:00 a.m. to Monday 9:00 a.m., to validate or not this strategy of an independent list but with the possibility of inserting personalities from opening in the fall. They also had to approve the ordering of the eight men and eight women for the future list, adopted by the Federal Council last weekend.
It was finally up to the activists to make the final choice of the head of the list, between the former head of EELV (2016-2009) David Cormand, 48, or Marie Toussaint, 36, who distinguished herself in initiating with several NGOs “the Case of the Century”, a legal action against the climate inaction of France.
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The two candidates did not really campaign, except for an internal debate last week. A competition that several party executives, however, considered tight. If David Cormand has a stronger knowledge of the mysteries of the party and a substantial network, Marie Toussaint has for her the fact of being a woman, in a party which claims to be feminist and already has a national secretary, Marine Tondelier and a head of line of deputies, Cyrielle Chatelain.
“Notable differences”
“The two profiles defend the same thing, they are part of the majority sensibility of the party, that of Marine Tondelier”, underlines Alain Coulombel, member of the executive office. “The only small difference, he concedes, is their relationship to Nupes. Marie Toussaint is a little closer to Nupes, less critical” than David Cormand, who does not hide his reluctance vis-à-vis this alliance with LFI, the PS and the PCF.
Marie Toussaint admits to AFP that she was “out of line + the debate is impossible and we will never go together + to the Europeans”. But she admits that the conditions for a union in particular with LFI are not met, with “significant differences, in particular on the Europe of defense or Ukraine”.
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It is not the first party to decide to go it alone. The PCF has already designated its head of list a week ago, Léon Deffontaines, a close friend of the boss of the communists Fabien Roussel. La France insoumise, which has just announced that 95% of its militants have voted for a union list, will continue its efforts of persuasion by June 2024.
“We continue to want to convince on a single list, quite simply so that on the evening of the Europeans, we can say that the Nupes is the first political force in the country”, ahead of the RN and the macronists, declared Mathilde Panot on BFMTV Sunday. LFI is already scalded by the fact of having been excluded from the negotiations of its partners concerning the senatorial elections of September, where it hoped to obtain at least one seat. But the training of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, which has almost no major voters, had little weight to put in the balance.
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EELV, which aims to achieve a better score than in 2019 (13.5%) in European women, wants to wear its colors to broaden its base, but defends a common left-wing candidacy for the presidential election of 2027. The latest polls give scores for the upper left if each party in the coalition presented a separate list, rather than with a single list.
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