Toulouse (AFP)

More than 2,000 participants and new members: the environmentalists were thrilled Thursday for the opening of their summer days in Toulouse, posting their ambitions without ambition a little more than six months of municipal.

With its success in the European elections in May (13.5%), EELV is making its political comeback on the upswing and morale swelled to the block. Like his leader, Yannick Jadot, who Thursday morning again, assured BFM that it was "that ecology takes power" in 2022, "the great chance of our country."

"The # JDE2019, it's gone! It's shaking a little at the gate," said Senator Esther Benbassa on Twitter arriving at the University of Mirail. "This is a good year, we are about the same level of affluence as Nimes in 2009," said AFP the former European deputy Alain Lipietz.

In charge of the organization, Marine Tondelier announced more than 2,000 people, twice the number of last year in Strasbourg, and getting up in a well filled amphitheater the new members of the party. EELV now has a membership of just over 7,000, compared to just under 5,000 at the end of 2018.

If "the sweaters who scratch and the birkenstocks are not obligatory", "the wooden tie begins to democratize"!, Smiled the one who could contest the mayor of Hénin-Beaumont (Pas-de-Calais) in March, in an allusion to the clothing accessory once worn by 2011 primary school student Henri Stoll.

- "King of oil" -

The national secretary of EELV David Cormand emphasized in his last speech in this function the "striking contrast" between the "years of famine" known by EELV and the current period. "The questions put by the ecologists are now on the front of the stage," he said, not hiding the party's ambitions for the municipal government: "we postulate to drive change."

Calling EELV members to "modesty", the national secretary also pointed out that "no personality can succeed alone", in what sounded like a warning to Yannick Jadot sometimes accused of having "taken the melon" after the Europeans.

And, in a sentence in which the scent of revenge floated, David Cormand could not help but send a spike to the former socialist big brother: "In the past, we have known crushing, contemptuous partners, filled with the morgue of The memory of their mistakes should guide us. "

Thursday morning on France 2, the first secretary of the PS Olivier Faure had blasted "the mistake" of "think that because we won an election we became the king of oil". "The lesson of the Europeans is that nobody won," he said.

- A Congress in November -

"We did not take the big head, we have our feet on the ground," said MP Karima Delli in the gallery. "We are turned towards an ambition shared by millions of French and Europeans: we must change people's lives," she said.

"We are no longer at the time of + the ecology it is later + It is now! It is necessary that the maximum of towns and villages are green. (...) The subject it is not to know if one is able or not, because it is necessary! (...) It is not a question of melon, but a question of duty ", estimated with the AFP M. Lipietz.

Still, the way to the municipal is still long. Meanwhile, environmentalists will have to pass the stage of their Congress, planned for November, without spreading their divisions too much. In the spheres of the JDE, the issue was already agitating participants on Thursday, while three "contributions" for the moment have been filed: one emanating from the direction of EELV, the other from the former MP Eva Sas and the third of activists in the Occitanie region.

David Cormand pushes the candidacy of the duo Julien Bayou-Sandra Regol, the two spokespersons of the party. An option that does not have the favor of Mr. Jadot, who would recognize more in that of Ms. Sas, according to executives of EELV.

© 2019 AFP