Photo by JOHN TOWNER on Unsplash
The European Green Party have congratulated the French Green Party Europe Écologie Les Verts (EELV) with its “impressive” growth in this week’s Senate elections.
“Never before have there been so many Green members of parliament in France,” said the Green Party in a statement.
Monday’s projections show a jump from 12 to 17 or more seats for the Greens in the Senate. This number can increase further until 3 October, when the remaining newly elected Senators will choose to join a group.
Together with the already historically high number of Green MPs in the Assemblee Nationale (the French lower house) since last year, this means that the Green parliamentary representation in France is at its highest level ever.
The Green Senate group is more gender balanced and younger.
Green Senator Mathilde Ollivier, aged 29, will be the youngest member of the Senate, representing the climate generation. In this way, the Greens are helping to make institutions such as the Senate more representative of French society.
The other new Green senators are Yannick Jadot (elected in Paris and former Member of the European Parliament), Antoinette Guhl, Anne Souyris (both elected in Paris) and Ghislaine Senée (elected in the department of Yvelines).
Observers attribute the Greens’ success to their solidity at the local level in the country. In the 2020 local elections, a Green wave swept through French cities.
By winning elections in cities such as Lyon, Bordeaux, Strasbourg, Poitiers and Grenoble, while sharing in left-wing victories in Paris and Marseille, the French Greens established themselves as a leading political force.
The French Greens also made historic gains in the recent European elections in 2019. The French Green Party Europe Ecologie les Verts (EELV) has been a full member of the European Green Party since 1993.
