By Chris Jones - 12th January 2007
Three MEPs have asked French Greens to rally around TV presenter Nicolas Hulot as a single candidate for this year’s French presidential elections.
Although Dominique Voynet has already been selected as the official candidate of the Verts for next April’s vote, Marie-Hélène Aubert, Jean-Luc Bennahmias and Marie Anne Isler Béguin call on her to step down.
Instead, they suggest that all French greens should back Hulot, a well-known ecologist, even though he is not currently a candidate.
Writing in Libération, the three MEPs say that “the two official candidates [Voynet and rival Corinne Lepage from splinter party Cap 21] should extend their hand to the third candidate, who is clearly far more popular among the French public”.
A recent poll showed that Hulot would garner more than 11 per cent of the vote in the first round were he to stand, compared to just one per cent for the two official candidates.
Hulot, whose Fondation Nicolas Hulot backs environmental projects around the world, will not confirm whether he is standing until 22 January.
His ‘ecological pact’, calling on the French political elite to incorporate green thinking in all their political decision, has already been signed by most of the leading presidential candidates, including Nicolas Sarkozy and Ségolène Royal.
Despite the uncertainty surrounding Hulot’s candidacy, the MEPs clearly believe he has the best chance of keeping green issues in the public eye.
“Environmental issues have finally become headline news,” they write. “Yet traditional environmental supporters look increasingly like they have been left behind by the current green wave.”
“They seem incapable of organising themselves or of reaching an agreement, in the light of this year’s golden election opportunity, on a single platform, strategy or candidate.”
“This situation is frustrating for the millions of citizens who believe that the moment has come to place the environment at the heart of the public and political debate, especially in the light of the largely unconvincing promises from other candidates.”
They ask whether “the gulf between the three candidates is so deep” that they cannot put their relatively few differences aside and rally behind a single candidate.
“What are we waiting for? Nicolas Hulot alone is credited with more than 10 per cent of the vote, and a combination of the three candidates would mean that environmental issues would finally have real political weight. Do we want to let this chance pass us by?”
Voynet, who is the official candidate of the party to which the three MEPs belong, has yet to respond to their suggestion.
But Corinne Lepage, also writing in Libération, said she had no intention of backing Hulot.
She claimed that the TV presenter had forfeited his right to be backed by the environmental movement after compromising his ethics.
“How can a man whose foundation includes companies that environmentalists are fighting against on a daily basis truly represent the environmental movement in the presidential elections?” she wrote.
Hulot’s foundation has received financial support from a wide range of French companies such as energy group EDF, cosmetic firm L’Oreal and construction group Bouygues, all of whom have been targeted by green campaigners in the past.
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