Once again, the summer universities of the Europe Ecologie Les Verts party are opening against a backdrop of discord and internal debate. At a time when sustainable growth is more necessary than ever, has ecology chosen the right party?
EELV, a party without a leader
If of course there are always currents of thought and debates of ideas within political organisations (debates that the parties consider healthy and democratic when they do not succeed in making them converge), EELV has made it a trademark. A brand that instead of distinguishing it ends up creating confusion and permanent illegibility. A party of war of leaders and egos that paradoxically lacks a real and above all lasting leader. Mitterrand ruled the PS (Hollande is not a natural leader), Chirac the RPR, Sarkozy the UMP (even absent), Le Pen the FN from father to daughter, Bayrou the Modem (the bad tongues will say that the reverse is also true), the PC has always had difficulty to find the surreal leadership of a Marchais ... before finding the gouaille in a no less surreal Mélenchon for the Left Front, Besancenot has marked by his talent as an orator a party whose name is more complicated to remember than that of its media leader, Laguiller with her 6 presidential candidacies (the record) and her famous "workers" definitively embodies Lutte Ouvrière, Borloo what exists of the UDI ... Who, objectively, and compared to these other political parties, embodies, leads, carries, and makes EELV shine ? To make their voice and their causes heard, human organisations need to be embodied and led, even those that claim collegiality and egalitarianism (even if in the end it is individualism that reigns). Finally, EELV's best score was obtained during the 2009 European elections (16.3%) when (partly unwillingly as always) it was embodied by a certain ... Daniel Cohn Bendit!
A leaderless party and an alienated party (which is perhaps correlated)
Alienated from the SP, of course. On the one hand, this ideologically colours political ecology, which can only be left-wing, and therefore necessarily divisive, excluding and irritating for those sensitive to the environment who do not find themselves in this self-proclaimed ideological monopoly. On the other hand, an alienation that makes it a party without pretensions ... well, probably a party of pretenders, but without pretension to govern. The last presidential campaign alone was a blatant demonstration of this, with a candidate who had no support from her party and was more concerned with negotiating positions by betting on another horse (as the saying goes). Nicolas Hulot, who did not run in 2007, finally had more weight than Eva Joly in 2012. The result: 2.31%, a discrediting of the party and the cause it is supposed to embody, and a condemnation to negotiate, without weapons, for seats. EELV did not want to win the election, which is not the least of the disavowals for a political party. It is free and autonomous that EELV can exist, to defend ecology and its vision of a reasoned growth. If it does not want to govern, EELV cannot present a global alternative model and is condemned to only be able to influence through gloomy backyard negotiations. Dependence, not independence.
A dispossessed party
Deprived of its cause, its raison d'être, its credo. Today, everyone thinks (if they don't act) about ecology, the environment and paradigm shifts. This is because ecology is shifting from a constraint to a solution, but also because the environmental education and awakening has taken place. It is therefore difficult for some of those who believe they have sounded the alarm to give up their authorship of the cause when new converts sometimes show themselves to be more zealous than they are, even though they are much less legitimate for the former. It is a difficult paradox to live with, to devote oneself to evangelising and then to suffer the spread and appropriation of the cause by the majority. In a way, the party of ecology could be a kind of ephemeral party, over a few decades anyway, aiming to alert, guide and make ecology politically compatible with the governing parties. The time to make ecology soluble.
Today, ecological expertise is not about why but about how. The discourse, like the latest declarations and tribunes, is still too much in the order of intention and explanation, often presented through "revelations" of what everyone has already known for a long time. The added value of an EELV party is that of a party of experts, free and determined to advance solutions rather than claims, the rate of ecology in development rather than the rate of ecology in government.
Published on atlantico on 22 August 2013
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