Greens face internal purge and leadership crisis
A three-month suspension has left Yannick Jadot, the former Green Party presidential candidate, sidelined by his own movement. The dispute stems from his public support for Raphaël Glucksmann’s bid for the Élysée, while Marine Tondelier, the party’s leader, also sought the nomination. Jadot described the decision as a sign of internal “lockdown thinking,” warning that such moves risk worsening the party’s electoral decline.
His criticism echoes concerns voiced by other Green figures. Sandrine Rousseau, a deputy from Paris, accused the leadership of “fortifying positions” and warned that “purges” were beginning within the organization. The tension reflects a deeper strategic impasse: the challenge of uniting social-democratic factions with those pushing closer to La France Insoumise.
Yann Wehrling, a former national secretary of the Greens and head of Écologie Positive, described the divide as “nearly broken.” He said Tondelier is “caught between two positions” and unlikely to survive the strain. Current polls place her at 3.6%—a figure that would have been higher, Wehrling argued, if the left had united behind a single candidate instead of splintering.
The party will not resolve its internal conflict until December, when it must decide between keeping Tondelier’s candidacy or backing another left-wing figure. The outcome of the Socialist primary will influence that choice. André Gattolin, a former Green senator who later joined La République en Marche, framed the primary as a way to “avoid electoral disaster.”
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Beyond ideology, the Greens’ survival hinges on securing parliamentary seats, a requirement for public funding. Gattolin noted that Tondelier’s strategy treats the party as a “support role” for La France Insoumise, aiming to win votes while preserving its presence in French politics.
Yet the cost of such alliances has blurred the Greens’ identity, according to critics. Louis Dumoulin, a political-ecology specialist, warned that the party’s focus on issues such as Gaza, eco-feminism, and the burkini debate risks alienating voters. Ferréol Delmas, director of the think tank Écologie Responsable, called the shift an “ecology detached from reality,” while Wehrling accused the movement of adopting an “insurrectional” approach borrowed from the far left.
Gattolin, now with LREM, portrayed the Greens as a “recycling ground” for former members of fringe leftist groups. The party’s historical opposition to nuclear power, rooted in 1970s anti-nuclear protests, remains a core stance, even as 61% of French voters now view nuclear energy as a “strategic asset,” according to a March Ipsos poll.
