Paris (AFP)

The EELV candidate for the presidency of the Île-de-France region Julien Bayou announced on Tuesday to report to the National Campaign Accounts Commission (CNCCFP) what he considers to be, by outgoing president Valérie Pécresse, the use of public money for his campaign.

She has not yet officially declared her candidacy for re-election, but Julien Bayou said at a press conference in Paris that "it is already with public money that Valérie Pécresse is organizing a personal communication "in view of the ballot on June 20 and 27.

"It is not possible to promote the results of the activity of the Region with public money," he insisted.

The ecologist assured to have a "long list" of violations of the electoral code.

He cited as an example a "massive poster campaign in September 2020 on the Region's first participatory budget", the production of a video broadcast using the tablets offered to each high school student or even a "flying leaflet in each textbook".

The two most significant examples according to him are the printing and distribution in letterboxes of three million 14-page leaflets praising the record of Valérie Pécresse (Libres !, ex-LR) with the logo of the Region;

and communication by Île-de-France mobilités, an organization of which she is president, on new trains delivered after the end of the mandate.

Julien Bayou affirmed that Valérie Pécresse was all the more at fault since she could not ignore that a similar question on communication around trains had left hovering, in 2011, the risk for the socialist Jean-Paul Huchon of being struck. ineligibility, after having seen his campaign accounts invalidated.

"This time, we signal to the Commission upstream of a campaign to avoid having to organize a protest downstream", after the elections, "and risk its cancellation" in the event of victory of Valérie Pécresse, underlined the national secretary of EELV.

"There are a few dozen days of campaign left, we want it to take place on a level playing field," he added.

Île-de-France Rassemblage, platform of support for Valérie Pécresse, and her spokespersons Florence Portelli and Othman Nasrou denounced in a press release "a crude diversionary maneuver to make people forget the calamitous positions taken by Julien Bayou and his friends (Halimi case, boomers, Millî Görüş mosque) and to hide the sidereal void of their project for Ile-de-France residents ".

© 2021 AFP