Between 3,500 and 4,000 people gathered around the candidate, surpassing the record held by Daniel Cohn-Bendit at the 2009 Europeans (2,500 people), in the same place.

The objective was to "make numbers", for a party which does not have a militant culture of large gatherings.

The candidate has also been content so far with public meetings, often outdoors.

"It's important to show that we're here too. That it's not just the far right that manages to mobilise," Maxine Mai, a 20-year-old political science student, told AFP. years, came to the Zenith while the Reconquest candidate Eric Zemmour was holding a meeting at the same time at the Trocadero.

"Tomorrow is ours. And it's tomorrow, not five years from now, that we have to take our lives back into our own hands. So defy the odds, outdated outdated labels, silence the watchdogs of the old world", hammered Yannick Jadot, credited with around 6% of voting intentions, and whose campaign never really took off, despite French concerns for the climate.

Green candidate Yannick Jadot during his meeting at the Zenith in Paris, March 27, 2022 STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN AFP

"We still had the hope that we would do a little more" in this campaign, recognized Isabelle Catrain, a 53-year-old activist, who "still believes in it for 15 years".

Yannick Jadot, symbolically arriving at the meeting by bike, notably called on the youth, often abstaining, to join him: "Young people from France, burst into this ballot, come and shake us up", he urged.

There are "two weeks left to lift the smoke screens", he said, inviting to "oppose Jadot and Macron" in the second round, because "it is the survival of our humanity that is at stake today" .

After a moment of emotion, when a Ukrainian woman spoke about her country being attacked by Russia and then the Ukrainian anthem was sung, the meeting wanted to be more festive with a short quiz for activists and musical capsules, which allowed to see in particular the candidate dancing with the rappers of Ärsenik.

"To sell dreams?"

In the presence of a "reunited ecological family", bringing together its former competitors in the primary, including Sandrine Rousseau, yet ejected from the campaign, many elected officials and former presidential candidates, Dominique Voynet, Eva Joly and Noël Mamère (José Bové being absent due to covid), Yannick Jadot tackled Emmanuel Macron's balance sheet and the power of lobbies.

"In 2017, many French people, especially on the left, thought they elected Mendès-France or Rocard. They had the arrogance of Giscard and the brutality of Sarkozy", he lashed out, inviting voters to "liberate our Republic of the interference of the lobbies with which and for which Emmanuel Macron governed for five years".

Green candidate Yannick Jadot during his meeting at the Zenith in Paris, March 27, 2022 STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN AFP

"Outside the lobbies" of pesticides, factory farming, for-profit Ehpad, car manufacturers, hunters", shelled the candidate who denounced once again TotalEnergies, which "must leave Ukraine now".

“Should we sell dreams and say things that are a little false and that slam?” asked Bonaventure Palomino, a 49-year-old engineer.

"Yannick Jadot has a reasonable campaign" which "does not correspond to the world of the presidential election", he regretted.

The one who has often been accused of being too smooth defended himself: "I hear people say that I wouldn't shout loud enough to make myself heard. It's because I want to address the intelligence of women and men, not their instincts," he said.

The candidate criticized "the mirage of a + useful + or + effective + vote on the left", in favor of the rebellious candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, in a meeting at the same time in Marseille.

"We do not vote forgetting the ambiguities in the face of the conspirators of the health crisis, forgetting the support for the Russian intervention in Syria and the ambiguous contortions on Ukraine. We do not vote for those who refuse to call a dictator a dictator," he said.

© 2022 AFP