Paris (AFP)

A few months before the municipal elections for which they have ambitions, EELV environmentalists are forced by their congress on Saturday to intense internal negotiations to appoint their new national secretary and his team.

The leaders of the four texts presented may have claimed, before and after the vote of 3,200 activists on November 16, the imperative need not to reiterate the fratricidal wars of the past to preserve the good dynamics of the European (13.5%). It is time for internal negotiations, traditionally trying in this party.

Both would ideally like a motion called "summary" at the vote Saturday in Saint-Denis of 400 delegates appointed 15 days earlier. On the face of it, spokesmen Julien Bayou and Sandra Regol, co-headers of the text list, who came out on top (42.9%), are in a strong position, and the first can hope to win the position of national secretary and thus succeed MEP David Cormand - who supports him.

But the former MP Eva Sas - who led the text supported by several relatives of the leader of EELV Yannick Jadot (26.2%) - the Deputy National Secretary Alain Coulombel - who carried another co- signed by former MEP Alain Lipietz and the theorist of the collapse Yves Cochet (21.6%) - and Executive Board member Philippe Stanisière (8.5%) put pressure on them by joining forces to develop a common text.

"The motion of Julien Bayou is in the lead, it is undeniable, but it does not have the majority," said Alain Coulombel to AFP. The other motions have in common to reproach the outgoing management for lack of transparency and collegiality in the decisions.

- Jadot leader -

"They decided to coalesce with three to negotiate more closely, which is unfortunately quite conventional in congress," sighs Julien Bayou. "If we want there to be a broad synthesis, we need a synthesis between the motion A, and the others" who have three similar weight, justifies Mounir Satouri, signatory of the motion came second.

Mr. Bayou assures to have "proposed the day after the vote a synthesis of the best proposals from different texts".

But it is the composition of the executive bureau of the party, to balance between the different tendencies, which generates the negotiations. Even if there is a consensus on the national secretary, to whom to give the crucial positions of deputies, spokespersons? "We're on time ... We even have time to break up, get angry and pretend not to talk for 48 hours," jokes Julien Bayou.

Yannick Jadot, who has not supported any motion officially, is not in any case debated. Whatever the national secretary on Saturday, it is the former head of the list of European elections, now MEP, who will remain the leader of EELV.

No more tensions that sometimes animated the party a few months ago on the occasion of some of his speeches? "The positions of one and the other are changing", as when Mr. Jadot recently declared "not incompatible" with the LFI deputy François Ruffin, notes Alain Coulombel.

Sandra Regol speaks of a misunderstanding now dispelled: "Sometimes the words we use are not well understood, (...) and in hyper-media attention, (Yannick Jadot) has refined its vocabulary ".

According to Stéphane Pocrain, David Cormand's assistant in the European Parliament and one of Yannick Jadot's advisers for the European elections, there is no more deadly opposition within the party between the Jadot way, "a strongly identified ecology and clear, "and the philosophy of David Cormand and Julien Bayou for whom ecology must also serve to gather on the left. On the contrary, he argues, the idea makes its way that "they correspond to timings, different polls".

© 2019 AFP