Britain, France, and the European Union - Comparing Environmental Policies in 16 Countries - page 107

On the political side, politics since the beginning of the Fifth Republic
under Charles de Gaulle in 1958 has been characterized by swings between
two coalitions of parties on either the socialist or the conservative side.
In 2007 the conservative Union for the Popular Movement won the presi-
dency and a majority of seats in the National Assembly. It had also won the
presidency and a majority in 2002. From 1997 to 2002 the Socialists gov-
erned in a coalition with the Communists. The Verts entered the coalition
with seven seats in the Assembly.
One or two environmental parties have been active since 1974, when a
green candidate, René Dumont, ran in the presidential election, winning
more than 1% of the votes. In 1979 Les Verts (the Greens) won 4% of the
parliamentary vote, but failed to win any seats. Ten years later, it won 11%
of the vote, and got nine seats. In 1994 the Greens, now divided, won 5%,
but no seats. In 1999 the Verts won 10%, and got nine seats. They had won
seventy seats on regional councils the year before, and also won nine seats
in the European Parliament. Three years later their seats in the National
Assembly dropped to only three. Like the German Greens, the Verts were
ambivalent about practical politics. They wanted to be a different kind of
party, emphasizing local autonomy, complex written procedures, and ini-
tially a reluctance to compete for power. They have a libertarian streak.
Many believe the answer is not better pollution control technology, but
a total rejection of industrial production. Besides environmentalism, the
Verts favor feminism, gay rights, racial minorities, and legalization of soft
drugs. For a long time, they avoided entering into coalitions, but did so
in 1997. This was with the Socialists, labeled the Red-Green coalition.
After the coalition won a parliamentary majority, they entered into
shared power, with Dominique Voynet as environment minister. In 2007
they won four seats.
Another green party began in 1990. Génération Ecologie was headed by
Brice Lalonde. Lalonde, who started as a student radical during the 1968
demonstrations called the Events of May, became a leftist militant during
the 1970s, later became the head of the Friends of the Earth, and eventually
became the environment minister in a Socialist government in 1988-91.
Many saw Lalonde's role as merely self-promotion. In any event, internal
squabbles caused Génération Ecologie to self-destruct by 1997. A small
successor party focuses on local politics. In 2012 the Greens bounced
back, in a reorganized form. They won 17 seats in the National Assembly
of 577 seats, and entered a governing coalition with the Socialists. They
also won 12 seats in the Senate out of 348 seats.