France: Pas Commes les Autres-The French Greens at the Crossroads

Before 1989 the new wave of Green party politics which had influenced most of the rest of western Europe seemed to have bypassed France. In that year, however, the French Green Party (Les Verts) followed a modest success in the March local elecdons (8 per cent in towns with over 9,000 inhabitants) with an impressive 10.59 per cent in the European elections. This gave the movement nine MEPs, the largest number of any of the European Green parties. This was not quite the rise from nowhere that it might have seemed: Les Verts first emerged in the mid-1970s and can look back on a history of intermittent minor successes, including the 3.8 per cent vote for Antoine Waechter in the 1988 presidential election.