Political Activities
Alain Lipietz is a former Maoist. He was a candidate of Les Verts for the legislative elections of 1986 in Seine-Saint-Denis, and became the national spokesperson of the French Green Party in 1997.
He has been an elected representative of the Green Party at the European Parliament since 1999.
Alain Lipietz also is an adviser to the Commission économique des Verts, a member of the Commission française du développement durable (since 2000) and a member of the Conseil d'établissement du Collège de France (since 2001).
On 21 June 2001, Alain Lipietz was elected candidate of the French Green Party for 2002 presidential elections. With 50% of the votes cast in the party's primaries, Lipietz narrowly beat rival candidate Noël Mamère.
However, a first controversy arose during summer 2001, when Alain Lipietz seemed to have appeared sympathetic to separatists jailed for planting bombs in Corsica. A second controversy was the issue of reopening the Mont Blanc Tunnel between France and Italy, which had been closed since 1999 after 39 people died in a fire. Meanwhile, the party dropped from seven to five percent support in opinion polls.
Finally, on 14 October 2001, Les Verts managed to survive a major internal crisis and changed candidate, dropping Alain Lipietz to choose Noël Mamère, who had made the irrevocable decision not to run a day sooner.
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