PARIS (Reuters) -Green voters on Tuesday chose former Greenpeace activist Yannick Jadot to be their candidate for France’s April 2022 presidential election.
Jadot won the vote by a narrow margin, winning 51.03% of the votes against 48.97% for the self-styled radical Sandrine Rousseau.
The 54-year old EU lawmaker wants France to devote 20 billion euros ($23.43 billion) per year to the transition to a more environment-friendly economy, progressively end intensive animal farming and establish a new wealth tax.
Born in a village in northern France, Jadot worked a few years for NGOs in Burkina Faso and Bangladesh before getting increasingly involed in politics back home while heading several environment-focused NGOs, including the French branch of Greenpeace.
The French Greens lack the firepower of their German counterparts and no opinion poll sees Jadot as a serious challenger to President Emmanuel Macron.
But the question is whether the self-styled consensus builder, who wants to attract voters beyond the remits of the small Greens party, could emerge as a leader of the fragmented French Left – for that election and beyond – and weigh on the political debate.
(Reporting by Ingrid MelanderAdditional reporting by Elizabeth Pineau, Benoit Van OverstratenEditing by Geert De Clercq)
