Dominique Voynet claims it, she largely contributed to the success of the “R25 gang”, an expression intended to mock her socialist allies. In February 1994, before the Assises de la transformation sociale gathered in Paris by the PS to reunite a left still traumatized by the collapse of the 1993 legislative elections, the former anesthesiologist then held a speech that she remembers as ” aggressive “. The Greens, she warns, will only form an alliance with the PS if its leaders abandon their superiority complex and break with the« arrogance » with which they strut around in the back of their comfortable official Renault 25s. Close the ban.
Having become minister for the environment under Lionel Jospin in the government of the plural left (1997-2002), Dominique Voynet prefers her bicycle to chauffeured limousines. It will happen regularly to install his daughter on the baby carrier of his bicycle to drive her to school, but it will not make much media noise. “It was a completely different era, where we continued to adapt the city to cars. The bicycle was seen as a hobby – or a working mode of transport – but certainly not an alternative to the automobile. »
It will not be able to reduce the cubic capacity of the ministerial cars but will obtain that a bicycle garage be fitted out in the ministries, where, on rainy days, the supporters of the little queen had to abandon their bicycles to the rigors of the weather.
Dangerous practice
At the end of the XXe century, riding two-wheelers in Paris, which then had no cycle paths, was a marginal and perilous practice, notoriously counter-intuitive.
“Let’s be honest, if I hadn’t considered it politically, I wouldn’t have asked myself the question of cycling in the city”, she admits today. “Because we had to do something, a com effect that made people think”, the minister who introduced the first Car-Free Day in 1998, sometimes arrives at the Council of Ministers by bicycle. Sometimes the initiative falls short. “Because of the large gravel in the courtyard of Matignon, I had to get off the saddle and push the bike. It was not an ultra-ministerial position”she laughs.
Dominique Voynet does not remember that his appearances on his bike caused mockery among his allies. “The question did not interest the socialists, she says. No more than Jean-Claude Gayssot, the Communist Minister of Transport, very sensitive to rail issues but who did not care about soft traffic modes. »
You have 10.34% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.