Paris (AFP)

MEP Yannick Jadot, qualified Sunday for the second round of the environmentalist primary, has been EELV's personality best known to the general public for two years, but his discrepancy with certain party positions forced him to reassure a militant base suspicious.

"I'm preparing": by distilling this expression with solemnity in the interviews given for two years, Yannick Jadot sends the message of the one who thinks himself unavoidable in the presidential election.

He has a weighty argument: it is with the list he led to the Europeans of 2019 (13.5%) that the dynamics of the Greens began in the interim elections.

But the past two years have been eventful for the MEP.

Already reputed far from the line of EELV on the economy and certain societal subjects, Yannick Jadot was at the center of friction, and even sometimes controversy, within the apparatus.

His participation in the police demonstration in front of the National Assembly in the spring is the most recent episode, which has annoyed many historical activists.

Considering that it is necessary to stick to the aspirations of the French rather than to what he considers the comfort of some on the left, Yannick Jadot speaks about safety, burkini, praises the entrepreneurs who innovate.

"He is not afraid to go to the front on sensitive subjects about which he knows he will take hits", greets his Green MEP colleague and supports Benoît Biteau.

This one warned him against the "perilous" participation in the demonstration of the police officers, but Yannick Jadot "does not do things in an unconscious way: often he raises hares".

The primary approaching, the MEP also wanted to reassure.

In April, he organized a meeting of the lefts in view of the presidential election, surrounding it with a unifying halo - even if the coup had no political follow-up.

And in his speech at the Summer Days of Ecologists in Poitiers, mid-August, he gave a large place to "combat ecology", that of struggles against lobbies.

However, the blue eyes of this tall brunette with a resounding voice shine brighter at the mention of his "solution ecology".

A member of the team of his ex-competitor Eric Piolle rolls his eyes: "These are big strings of political communication, he puts us to sleep".

- Straight talk -

Born on July 27, 1967 in Aisne, Yannick Jadot made his debut in politics by participating in the creation of the movement "La Déferlante" in 1986.

After studying economics at the Parisian University Dauphine and humanitarian experiences in Burkina Faso, Gabon and Bangladesh in the 1990s, he joined the NGO Solagral (Agricultural and Food Solidarity), specialized in monitoring international negotiations. .

After a brief stint in the Noël Mamère campaign in 2002, he obtained the campaign leadership of the NGO Greenpeace France.

"As soon as I arrived, (...) I found myself hooked to the anchor of a ship that the crew of the Rainbow Warrior II had just boarded", he said in a book in 2014.

He participated in the creation of the "Alliance for the Planet" and took part in the Grenelle de l'Environnement (a series of meetings between the State and associations on energy, transport, biodiversity) which resulted in government actions in 2007.

Then the activist puts on a political cap.

A few rants, - one of his diatribes against CETA (free trade agreement between the EU and Canada) makes 1.8 million views on Facebook - and his outspokenness explodes, especially when he calls the government to recognize the "bullshit" of the airport project at Notre-Dame-des-Landes, near Nantes.

Alongside Daniel Cohn-Bendit, he is one of the civil society figures joining Europe Ecology and agreeing to merge with the Greens for the 2009 European elections, the date of his entry into a Strasbourg hemicycle that he will never leave.

© 2021 AFP