Alain Lipietz - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Alain Lipietz is a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

engineer, economist

Economics

Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...

and politician

Politics

Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...

, a Member of the European Parliament

Member of the European Parliament

A Member of the European Parliament is a person who has been elected to the European Parliament. The name of MEPs differ in different languages, with terms such as europarliamentarian or eurodeputy being common in Romance language-speaking areas.When the European Parliament was first established,...

, and a member of the French Green Party

The Greens (France)

The Greens were a Green political party to the centre-left of the political spectrum in France. They had officially been in existence since 1984, but their spiritual roots could be traced as far back as René Dumont’s candidacy for the presidency in 1974...

Education

Alain Lipietz studied at the École polytechnique
École Polytechnique
The École Polytechnique is a state-run institution of higher education and research in Palaiseau, Essonne, France, near Paris. Polytechnique is renowned for its four year undergraduate/graduate Master's program...

(entered in 1966) and the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées
École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées
Founded in 1747, the École nationale des ponts et chaussées , often referred to as les Ponts, is the world's oldest civil engineering school...

(diploma in 1971). He then obtained a master's degree

Master's degree

A master's is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice...

in economy

Economics

(1972).

He became a researcher at the Institut de recherche des transports (transportation research institute, 1971-1973) and at the Centre d'études prospectives d'économie - Mathématiques appliquées à la planification (Center for prospective studies of economics - applied mathematics for planification, 1973-1999). He became a research director at CNRS in 1988. Since 1990, he is chief engineer at the Corps of Bridges and Roads (France)

Corps of Bridges and Roads (France)

The Corps of Bridges is a great technical corps of the French state. It is formed of the State Engineers of the Bridges.People entering the Corps are educated at the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées...

.

Since the beginning of his career, he has devoted himself to the analysis of social-economic relationships within human communities. He is thought of as having contributed to the Regulation school

Regulation school

The Régulation School is a group of writers on political economy and economics whose origins can be traced to France in the early 1970s where economic instability and stagflation were rampant in the French economy. The term ‘régulation’ was coined by Frenchman Destanne de Bernis who aimed to use...

of economic thought.

Political activities

Alain Lipietz is a former Maoist. He was a candidate of Les Verts

Les Verts

' is the name of various green political parties in French-speaking countries such as:official name:*Les Verts in France;*Les Verts in Luxembourg ;*Les Verts in Benin;*Les Verts in Mauritius;...

for the legislative elections of 1986 in Seine-Saint-Denis

Seine-Saint-Denis

- Culture :A number of hip hop artists come from the Seine-Saint-Denis, including one of the first major hip-hop groups in France, NTM, as well as Lord Kossity, or more recent acts such as Tandem or Sefyu.- Miscellaneous topics :...

, and became the national spokesperson of the French Green Party in 1997.

He has been an elected representative of the Green Party

The Greens (France)

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

French presidential election, 2002

The 2002 French presidential election consisted of a first round election on 21 April 2002, and a runoff election between the top two candidates on 5 May 2002. This presidential contest attracted a greater than usual amount of international attention because of Le Pen's unexpected appearance in...

. With 50% of the votes cast in the party's primaries, Lipietz narrowly beat rival candidate Noël Mamère

Noël Mamère

Noël Mamère is a French singer, cyclist and politician.He rose to fame in the 1980s as a TV entertainer, in particular on Antenne 2....

.

However, a first controversy arose during summer 2001, when Alain Lipietz seemed to have appeared sympathetic to separatists jailed for planting bombs in Corsica

Corsica

Corsica is an island in the Mediterranean Sea. It is located west of Italy, southeast of the French mainland, and north of the island of Sardinia....

. A second controversy was the issue of reopening the Mont Blanc

Mont Blanc

Mont Blanc or Monte Bianco , meaning "White Mountain", is the highest mountain in the Alps, Western Europe and the European Union. It rises above sea level and is ranked 11th in the world in topographic prominence...

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

The Greens (France)

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.

Court challenge to SNCF

In a precedent-setting case brought by Alain and his sister, SNCF

SNCF

The SNCF , is France's national state-owned railway company. SNCF operates the country's national rail services, including the TGV, France's high-speed rail network...

, the national railway of France

France

, was ordered on June 6, 2006, to pay almost $

United States dollar

The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....

80,000 in reparations for transporting members of their family to the Drancy deportation camp during World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. SNCF argued at trial that they were at the time under orders of the German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

military; the railroad further argued that the German military threatened to shoot any railroad official who disobeyed their orders. The court disagreed with SNCF concluding that there was no way that SNCF could have avoided knowledge of the prisoners' likely deportation to concentration camps and that SNCF made no effort to either protest the transportation or to transport them in a humane manner.

Main publications

He is the author of:

Green Hopes. The Future of Political Ecology (1993)
(Vert-espérance. Le futur de l'écologie politique)
Berlin, Bagdad, Rio - XXIst Century Has begun (1992)
(Bagdad, Rio: le XXIè siècle est commencé)

He also published books focusing on the French and Third World political economy:

Mirages and Miracles. Fortune and Misportunes of Global Fordism (1985)
(Mirages et miracles. Problèmes de l'industrialisation dans le Tiers-Monde)
To Swim or to Sink. On Economic Policies of the Frend Left Governments (1984)
(L'audace ou l'enlisement. Sur les politiques économiques de la gauche)

Other publications

The Wealth of Regions. Towards a Socio-economical Geography. Editor with G.Benko (2000)
What is Political Ecology ? The Great Transformation of XXIst century (1998)
Hour-glass Society. Job Sharing vs Social Exclusion (1996)
Phaedra : Identification of a Crime (1992)
The Winning Regions (edited with G. Benko, 1992)
Towards a New Economic Order. Post-Fordism, Ecology, Democracy (1989)
The crisis (with Clerc & Satre-Buisson, 1983)
The Enchanted World. Inflation, Credit and the Global Crises (1982)
Crisis and Inflation : Why ? (1979)
Capital and its Space (1977)
The Urban Land Tribute (1974)

He has also worked on many of the EC directives regarding the financial sector. (1990 - 2010)

External links

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