It was EELV’s first executive office since 2019 without Julien Bayou at the helm. The party leadership, which met on Saturday morning to discuss the case splashing its now ex-national secretary, reaffirmed in a press release its “confidence” in the work of the party’s internal unit against sexual and gender-based violence. The day before, the Secretary of State Marlène Schiappa, announcing to take the head of the very new structure launched by the presidential party, estimated in our columns that “the anti-sexist violence cells of the other parties (were) failures”. And to judge the functioning of that of “opaque” ecologists in the context of the Bayou affair.
This cell is “an unprecedented body”, which “does a difficult job and has been able to deal with, and is still dealing with, all the cases that are reported to it. Without its existence, several people would not have had other solutions”, defends EELV, which ensures that “all the people having a link with Julien Bayou have moved away from the file”. The cell “did not consider that there was reason to suspend Julien Bayou on a conservatory basis and it is continuing its work and these hearings”, adds the text.
Deputy National Secretary Jérémie Crépel, who replaces, with Léa Balage, National Secretary Julien Bayou, who resigned on Monday after accusations of psychological violence against an ex-companion, expressed “our pride in hearing the words of the victims and to treat gender-based and sexual violence seriously when others choose to ignore it”. In his speech, he underlined that “we were the first, after the Baupin affair, to set up a unit to fight against sexist and sexual violence”, of which he praised the “abnegation” of its members, and that “the possible need to outsource all or part of the investigations is on the table”.