Paris (AFP)

He made his weapons in associations to fight against poor housing, tax evasion, precarious trainees: Julien Bayou must take Saturday the head of Europe Ecology-The Greens, a party in search of new victories.

Candy salesman, pizza delivery man, tele-operator in a call center ... the current spokesperson for EELV, 39, has chained the odd jobs before studying at the Institute of Political Studies in Strasbourg then from Paris.

At the end of his master's degree in international economics, this Parisian, born into a "family of left sensibility, with a Maoist mother", admits to being confronted with a dilemma: "Choosing between the classic world of finance or insurance , or not...". It will not be.

His thing? "The administration, in this case that of the National Education, and the Council for Unesco," says the one who is now a student lawyer - after resuming his studies by correspondence - elected councilor to the region and always militant.

He made his first feats with the creation, with a handful of friends, of the collective "Générations précaires" in 2005. White mask on the face to remain anonymous, he denounces the abuse of trainees in some companies. By dint of punches, the group will obtain the obligation to have an agreement and to pay for internships lasting more than three months.

Julien Bayou then puts his talent for the verb and slogans shocks in the service of new fights, and gradually becomes "scintillating and media", as says his old friend of fifteen years, Manuel Domergue. He thus founded "Black Thursday" to fight against poor housing in Paris and excessive rents by squatting empty buildings. Or "Save the rich," with lashing out at a full shareholder meeting, to demand more equality.

The collective offered Jacques Séguéla a Casio watch, which "reads the time like a real Rolex", an allusion to the controversy created by the communicant, who considered that "at 50 if you do not have a Rolex we missed his life ".

- "Ecology very left" -

Recently, he co-founded "Our affair for all", which is one of the associations that have assigned the state for inaction on climate change.

While his daring in associations or ecologists allows him to score points, the militant with chestnut hair and bush was slow to transform the essay into politics with environmentalists, unlike Raphael Glucksmann (PS-PP) or Ian Brossat ( PCF), of the same generation as him.

At the EELV congress in 2013, her "Love" list came a long way behind Emmanuelle Cosse, Yves Cochet and Alain Lipietz. Whatever. He will become spokesman of the party the same year, before being elected regional councilor of Ile-de-France.

But in June 2019, while preparing the ground for a long time internally, he was beaten by David Belliard during the primary that invests the candidate for mayor of Paris.

Some in the party consider that his status as an eternal activist is not in harmony with the new ambition of the ecologists to exercise power.

But the outgoing national secretary, David Cormand, sees it above all as an advantage: "The DNA of political ecology is precisely activism, from Cohn-Bendit to Jadot.Julien is not just hair in the wind screaming in the He is a serious activist with strong organizational skills. "

"Julien is more on the line ecologist-citizen-activist In Paris, he returned to his traditional alliances, a very affirmed ecology on the left", explains to the AFP the ecologist mayor of the second arrondissement of Paris, Jacques Boutault, a close .

Julien Bayou likes to take as an example the measures taken by Eric Piolle, environmental mayor of Grenoble, who "drastically reduced pollution in the city by reducing the car's position, making bike paths or prohibiting billboards".

"Is it radical? Is it subversive? No, it's green," he slices. But conversely, for a left opponent, "Julien is LFI green version".

© 2019 AFP