Cohn-Bendit to lead French Greens into EU elections

Eight months before the European elections, Green MEP Daniel Cohn-Bendit has presented a new movement called ‘Europe Ecologie’, predicting that his list will attract at least 10% of the vote in the upcoming poll. He recently spoke to EURACTIV France in an interview.

Rather than choosing to run for re-election in Germany, where he was first elected in 1994, Cohn-Bendit founded ‘Europe Ecologie’ because he says French voters need a “point of convergence” for the environmental movement during next year’s European elections.

“We are trying to gather together for Europe all those who identify with the necessity for a radical change, which is called the ecological change,” said Cohn-Bendit, who is still best known for leading the May ’68 student uprising in Paris.

On 20 October, the newly founded movement presented its manifesto and unveiled lists in eight French electoral constituencies for the European elections.

Speaking to EURACTIV France last week, Cohn-Bendit confirmed that he would stand in the Ile-de-France region alongside Eva Joly, a former anti-corruption judge now involved in politics.

The manifesto was presented with the support of various other French political figures, including Cécile Duflot, national secretary of ‘Les Verts’ and Antoine Waechter, the president of the Mouvement Ecologiste Indépendant (MEI).

The movement also received a major boost by garnering the support of anti-globalisation and farmers’ leader José Bové.

Cohn-Bendit said clinching an agreement on the manifesto had not been without its problems. “It is difficult because getting together means that we come up against each other’s practices and views,” he said.

He also admitted that keeping the new movement together would be anything but a smooth ride. “We are not used to working together, and we do not even have the same way of working politically. We have to agree to move together at a similar pace, which is never easy.”

The manifesto is founded on the premise that “humanity has put itself in the situation in which it has lost control of its destiny” and that we need to “break with this condemned system,” said Cohn-Bendit. It calls for “new regulation, founded on the social and ecological imperative” to be established democratically and involving the human community, he explained.

Cohn-Bendit said it was a “great disappointment” to see German Chancellor Angela Merkel “backtracking” on her climate change commitments due to the financial crisis. “With countries as different from one another as Poland and Germany, we must create a compromise that is both sustainable and acceptable for everyone. In any case, it is a mistake to think that we have to put our climate demands on hold because of the financial crisis,” he told EURACTIV France.

And he believes the current crisis can inspire further environmental reforms. “We must apply the same logic to the environment that we are applying to finance […] We cannot say that we have now understood that we should have subjected the financial sector to more regulation earlier on and then do less in the environment: this is not logical!” 

To read the full interview, please click here.

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