The Independent Ecological Movement (Mouvement Ecologiste Indépendant) is a political party in France founded by Antoine Waechter, former presidential candidate of The Greens in 1994. The MEI hoped to replaced the Greens as the major green party, but due to the Green's electoral deals with larger parties, it failed to do so. They claim to be purely ecologist, and neither on the left or right. Waechter failed to win enough endorsements to be a candidate in the French presidential election, 1995. The party ran candidates in the 2004 regional elections and in the European Parliament election, 2004 (France) and were able to prevent the Greens from gaining more seats, such as in the Eastern EU parliamentary region where the MEI's 3% were enough to prevent the Greens from taking 2 seats there instead of one.
In the 2007 presidential election, Antoine Waechter rallied the centrist Francois Bayrou after failing to be a candidate himself. Before the 2007 general election, the party signed an electoral deal with Ecology Generation, the Greens and CAP21 having refused to join. 133 MEI candidates nationwide ran for the assembly's 577 seats. 84 candidates obtained 1% or more, even with Green opposition. The MEI seems to have become France's second green party.
Despite being openly favourable to the Europe Écologie coalition, for the 2009 European Parliament election, the party ran as part of the Independent Ecological Alliance which won 3.63% of the vote.
The party continued its participation in the Independent Ecological Alliance during the 2010 regional elections, except notably in Alsace where it participated in a joint Europe Écologie-MEI list, which later merged with the Socialist list. Antoine Waechter was elected regional councillor for the Haut-Rhin and the party received 2 other regional councillors across France.
Famous quotes containing the words independent, ecological and/or movement:
“So far as I am individually concerned, & independent of my pocket, it is my earnest desire to write those sort of books which are said to “fail.””
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“It seems to me that there must be an ecological limit to the number of paper pushers the earth can sustain, and that human civilization will collapse when the number of, say, tax lawyers exceeds the world’s total population of farmers, weavers, fisherpersons, and pediatric nurses.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“There is no example in history of a revolutionary movement involving such gigantic masses being so bloodless.”
—Leon Trotsky (1879–1940)