Besançon (AFP)
First woman and first ecologist elected mayor of Besançon, Anne Vignot advocates a "social ecology" in a city that has voted on the left for almost 70 years.
The candidate, who succeeded in bringing together the PS, the PCF and Génération.s from the first round, without nevertheless uniting with the rebellious France between the two polls, was elected Sunday with 43.8% of the votes. It was ahead of candidates LR Ludovic Fagaut (41.61%) and LREM Eric Alauzet (14.55%).
Mrs. Vignot, 60, succeeds the former socialist Jean-Louis Fousseret, now LREM. She was part of her majority since 2014 and held the position of assistant for sustainable development, the environment and the energy transition.
Anne Vignot was born on February 28, 1960 in Dole (Jura) into a working family of five children. After a childhood in the working city of Tavaux (Jura), she studied geography at the University of Besançon, then in Lyon.
Passionate about the society-nature relationship, Ms. Vignot was administrator and then president of the Regional Conservatory of Natural Areas from 1998 and director of the Besançon Botanical Garden from 2006 to 2014.
The ecologist currently works as a research engineer in geography at the CNRS chrono-environment laboratory. She has a son, a pediatrician in Seine-Saint-Denis.
Its beginnings in politics started ten years ago, when EELV decided to constitute lists formed with 50% of personalities resulting from the civil society for the regional elections. The Greens of the region, and in particular Eric Alauzet, then proposed to "this woman, environmentalist and intellectual" to take the lead in the Doubs. This is how she was elected regional ecological councilor in 2010.
She will then take her card from the Greens and will appear on the list of Jean-Louis Fousseret in 2014. At the municipal council, she takes the reins of the environmental group at the municipal council. She was unanimously nominated by her fellow EELV comrades to head the list at the 2020 municipal elections.
© 2020 AFP