Gégory Doucet, the EELV mayor of Lyon, criticized the Tour de France last summer because it was macho and polluting. (archives) – Christophe Ena / AFP / POOL
- Léonore Moncond’huy, the EELV mayor of Poitiers, is at the center of a controversy for having refused a grant to two flying clubs.
- This episode is only the last in the great series of controversies against the new EELV mayors since the last municipal elections.
- The party is both a “victim” of its new status in political life and of the media system as it operates, believes Science Po research director Daniel Boy.
The bingo of controversies over EELV mayors continues, and the jackpot is not far away: after Lyon, Bordeaux, Strasbourg here is Poitiers. Léonore Moncond’huy, elected last June, refused a public subsidy to two flying clubs, including one organizing first flights for children with disabilities. It is today taken to task by many elected right and far right on social networks, as well as the Secretary of State for Transport, Jean-Baptiste Djebbari. At the heart of the controversy, this statement during the city council of March 29: “It was my childhood dream to take the plane to go to the other side of the world. But I don’t think you realize the dreams that children should be saved from. The air, it’s sad, should no longer be part of children’s dreams today. “
This new “controversy” is to be placed in the file of the new EELV mayors, who have chained them since the start of the school year: there was the “macho and polluting” Tour de France and the vegetarian meals in Lyon, the “dead Christmas tree”. »In Bordeaux, etc. Each time the model seems to be the same. 20 minutes wanted to try to understand the mechanism of these controversies with the director of research at Science Po, Daniel Boy.
Why are EELV mayors so often at the heart of controversy?
Political ecology has long seemed to be so far from central power. Basically, their opponents didn’t care. And I believe the status is changing. I put the switch to the Europeans of 2019, with their 13%. And then there were their municipal successes, in a small part of France, of course, but if we calculate their score where it was present, their score is around 13% anyway.
All this shows that ecology is becoming a competitor for power and we suddenly wonder if it could not win regions, which is not at all obvious. But, in any case, political ecology becomes more than scratching hair and something that seems threatening in the eyes of those who believe that it is not serious, dangerous for growth, evil people, etc.
Are these “defensive” attacks?
Yes quite. This is the frequent accusation of “punitive ecology”, which says that fundamentally ecology is not good because it builds us a sad world, a world without pleasures, an ossified world … C ‘ This concept of “punitive” ecology is also original: in a society, there are rules, and when people break these rules there are sanctions. The question is to know at what level we put the rule. But these attacks against environmentalists are facilitated by the fact that some statements, on the Christmas tree or the Tour de France, were still clumsy. And when there is clumsiness, the adversaries have a good time hitting them.
When we look at these controversies, do we have the impression that they take hold because we are attacking a kind of “popular common sense”?
Yes it is true, especially in the case of the Tour de France, which is something deeply popular. There, I believe that Grégory Doucet, the mayor of Lyon, made a mistake. Ditto on the Christmas tree [à Bordeaux]. There is indeed a danger for environmentalists from the moment their position seems “unpopular”, because it is a common practice, difficult to question.
Same thing about the controversy over meatless meals in the canteen?
In France, as in most industrialized countries, there is more and more caution when it comes to meat: we eat less. For ecological reasons or not. But, in a country like France, the “land of gastronomy”, it remains a delicate subject. And that can join the “antipopular” criticism because those who adopt vegetarianism, veganism or the simple reduction of meat, it is obviously rather people with a high level of education. So we can hang up on the controversies over the Christmas tree and the Tour de France. It’s a bit dangerous for environmentalists, especially when their position is not well explained.
Environmentalists paint a picture of rich and well-behaved people, which is not entirely wrong. You just have to see their electoral successes in the big cities and in wealthy neighborhoods, with graduates. All the studies show it. So, when there is a message from an elected ecologist who suggests that basically, they are not on the side of the people, it reinforces this image.
These controversies start from sentences or decisions that can sometimes seem trivial but, afterwards, impossible for these EELV mayors to take control of themselves to explain themselves.
This is the whole problem of public communication: when a politician emits something in the public domain and it is picked up by the media, by the adversaries, the interpretation that is made of it can be killer for the one who spoke. . It has happened many times to Emmanuel Macron, who is not the last communicator. I am thinking of the “first of the ropes”, etc. We take something, we remove it from the context, we remove the explanation that comes after because we don’t take it into account, and it becomes a drag. The ecologists are not the only ones to undergo this treatment. On the one hand the media are doing their job, on the other, the political opponents are exploiting a loophole… After all, the thing has been said, but to go back, it’s like putting the toothpaste back in the tube.
These little phrases from the EELV mayors are often spotted and popularized by right-wing or even far-right groups, before being taken up by members of the majority, or even of the left. How do we explain this path?
It is quite logical that the critics come from these places because they are the ones who are most opposed to political ecology, who are on this rhetoric of “punitive ecology”. As for the current majority, we know that they are bothered about ecology. It tries to defend a so-called “pragmatic” ecology and EELV does everything to explain that these “small steps” are not enough.
If members of the majority take up these controversies, it is because they are a way of falling on environmentalists, this time again with the “anti-popular” argument. Finally on the left we often try to be more careful with those who are probably the partners for the next election.