Gone are the days of controversy over foie gras at Christmas for environmental mayors? By bringing together in Lyon for the first time on the same platform eleven of their mayors and president of metropolis, the ecologists wanted to display the face of elected officials "at work". Concerned, according to the introductory formula of the mayor of Lyon Grégory Doucet, to do "even better at the service of [their] citizens". But also no doubt to give a different image of their action than the controversies that marked their first years of respective mandates.
"Since 2020, nothing has been spared us: futile controversies, attempts at misinformation, false trials", they write in the introductory remarks of the document presenting the policies they have been able to implement since the last municipal elections. If they claim to "deal with", environmentalists see it as a symptom of "the general brutalization of our society", which they also perceive in "the state of social relations" as well as in "the resurgence of incivility and aggression towards local elected officials". In response, they intend to "prove by example" their ability to lead the environmental transition.
"You must be disappointed, because of the controversies surrounding environmental mayors for a few months, I have not seen any", launched journalists Bruno Bernard, who saw him as a "clear strategy to caricature environmentalists". Aiming more particularly at the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin: "He has such tendentious remarks on ecoterrorism, that we understand that he puts elected environmentalists in it. It's a smokescreen, not to mention the real issues, for example water, while the government is backing down on all environmental issues. »
But if Grégory Doucet, Bruno Bernard, Jeanne Barseghian (Strasbourg), Pierre Hurmic (Bordeaux), Léonore Moncond'huy (Poitiers), François Astorg (Annecy), Emmanuel Denis (Tours), Anne Vignot (Besançon), Patrick Chaimovitch (Colombes ), Christian Métairie (Arcueil), Laurent Amadieu (Saint-Égrève), and Margot Belair (assistant for urban planning in Grenoble), representing Éric Piolle, excused for personal reasons, were all together in Lyon, it is also to a show of force. "Have you ever seen eleven PS or LR mayors in the same photo? questioned, mockingly, a close collaborator of the mayor of Lyon. They are far too caught up in their internal struggles for that. »
Since their election at the head of their town hall, the green elected officials claim to be together and united. Because they all say it: from their result in the cities will come their national salvation... "We saw each other a lot in video at the time of the Covid, we have since continued regularly, it is very important to be able to discuss what works, and especially on what does not work. We have similar objectives, if we can draw inspiration from what is being done elsewhere..." explained the mayor of Bordeaux Pierre Hurmic. The latter also admitted that he had "been had" at the start of his mandate with his declaration on the "dead Christmas tree". "I still have a freedom of speech that some criticize me for. So I'm not immune to a new "tree", but the controversy does not interest me, "he assured. Before adding: "The time of ecology is the long time, we ask to be judged at the end of this long time. »
For an hour, the town councilors summed up in a well-oiled choreography the various policies they had implemented in their respective cities. A somewhat disorderly inventory ranging from the delivery of organic baskets each week to 800 pregnant women in Strasbourg to the various examples of revegetation, including the right to vacation which benefited 3,500 people in 2022 in Poitiers, the appeasement of the "streets schools" or the urban farm of Bordeaux... The mayor of Tours, Emmanuel Denis, assured that three or four heat islands are eliminated each year, because "having trees in the city means reducing excess mortality by a third during heatwaves". The mayor of Annecy defended his housing policy, which relies in particular on the strict supervision of Airbnb to "recover 500 housing units". The mayor of Besançon, Anne Vignot, praised the different forms of participatory democracy, which have "affected 10% of the inhabitants in three years". Grenoble was pleased to have "implemented the lighting plan in 2015, without which we would have had three million more to pay this winter on [the] bills".
Local of the stage, the mayor of Lyon Grégory Doucet chose to talk about agriculture and food, underlining "the systemic impact" of the development of organic and local in school canteens. “In our cities, several million inhabitants are engaging in a new food model. We come to compensate for the government's immobility on certain subjects, "he said.
This Prévert-style catalog of policies is further detailed in an extensive 36-page press kit. Remaining at the foot of the stage, without speaking at the podium, the national secretary of Europe Ecology-The Greens Marine Tondelier did not hide that this document would be useful for training environmental activists throughout France, "at the time when everyone is starting to prepare for municipal elections in cities that are not yet environmentalists".
