Lyon (AFP)

MEP Yannick Jadot said he expected "nice surprises" for environmentalists on Sunday in the first round of the regional, supporting Fabienne Grébert, EELV candidate in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, Friday in Lyon.

When he got off the train, the potential presidential candidate took the bus to reach the Croix-Rousse market (4th arrondissement), where the team of Ms. Grébert and the EELV mayor of Lyon, Grégory Doucet were waiting for him.

"If Fabienne Grébert wins, I go to the presidential election. And if she does not win, I go anyway!" Said Mr. Jadot, jokingly, to a passerby who recognized him on his arrival.

"We are going to have nice surprises on Sunday because we are regularly underestimated by the polls and because the voters will be interested in the candidates who are interested in them", he added, more seriously, strolling past the stalls.

"Everything that we bring as transformations of society, that is carried out especially in the local elections, which affect the daily life of the people and which one does not consider as intermediate elections. In the regional ones, one does not make a poll for 2022 ", confirmed Mr. Jadot.

In Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, the polls give the candidate of the Greens neck and neck with the socialist Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, far behind the outgoing president Laurent Wauquiez (LR), the candidate of the RN Andrea Kotarac and that of LREM, the deputy Bruno Bonnell.

"I do not feel that we are going to be a touchdown with the PS, I am rather confident. But if Najat is in front, I will campaign with her," assured Ms. Grébert on Friday morning, while environmentalists and Socialists failed to come together in the first round.

Coué method?

On the market, the candidate towed by presenting herself as the future president of the region and Mr. Jadot as the future president of the Republic.

Without necessarily convincing the barge.

But the time was above all for jokes: "your strawberries are red, they are not green," said the MEP to a merchant.

"Are you green, are you? So have salad," retorted the person tit for tat.

Environmentalists left with a crate of fruit.

© 2021 AFP