A leading light in Europe Écologie – Les Verts, the French Green Party, has quite his political home of 20 years blaming his colleagues’ “shift to the left”. François de Rugy, French National Assembly Member for the western département of Loire-Atlantique and co-president of the ecologist group in France’s National Assembly, announced the move this week.
De Rugy’s argument is based on the Green Party’s refusal to work with President Hollande’s government since 2014. Even thought that government is a Socialist one it is not far enough left for the French Green Party, which has instead decided to partner Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Left Front in December’s regional elections. As RFI reports, that political grouping contains the French Communist Party.
De Rugy explained to French newspaper Le Monde in an interview:
“I am leaving Europe-Ecologie-Les-Verts because for me the EELV is finished.
“The open cycle started by Daniel Cohn-Bendit in 2008 has come to an end. Today, we no longer have debates, whether substantive or strategic, at the heart of a party that is sinking into a leftist slump.”
Since Euro-MP Daniel Cohn-Bendit left the French Green Party in 2012 another four MPs or senators have resigned, although admittedly some did so because they found it too right-wing.
No doubt coincidentally, de Rugy’s high profile resignation came at the same time as the publication of his new book – “Écologie ou Gauchisme, Il Faut Choisir“. Translated “Ecology or Leftism, You Have to Choose” it tears into the Green Party’s lurch to the left since it left the Socialist-led government and will be a focus point for his future attempts to unite “reformist environmentalists” both within and outside the Green Party.
In contrast, Britain’s most senior Green Party politician, Caroline Lucas MP, is seeking to build alliances with the hard left of British politics. Reaching out to Jeremy Corbyn in an open letter in The Independent, she seeks to ally her party’s grassroots to those of a resoundingly left-wing Labour Party.
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