Corinne Lepage
Encyclopedia
Corinne Dominique Marguerite Lepage, also known as Corinne Lepage (born 11 May 1951) is a French
politician and Member of the European Parliament
elected in the 2009 European election
for the North-West
constituency.
A former minister of the Environment
, she is the founder and President since 1996 of the Citizenship, Action, Participation for the XXIst Century
Party (CAP 21). She was also co-founder and Vice-President of the centrist Mouvement démocrate until March 2010, when she announced that she was leaving the movement.
She is also the founding member of the CRII-VIE, the Association for the Study of the Impact of Genetic Techniques upon the Living.
, in the department
of Hauts-de-Seine
. She attended Sciences-Po in Paris, where she obtained her law diploma; she started practising law in 1975. At the same time, she was appointed Maître de conférences (Note: the equivalent of a university lecturer), and later a Professor at Sciences-Po and Paris II from 1982 to 1986, and then at the Université de Paris at Val-deMarne from 1984 to 1990. She has taught at the Université de Paris at St.-Quentin-en-Yvelines since 2005. She is married and the mother of two children.
Her name first began appearing in the media in 1978, during the Amoco Cadiz
disaster. An American oil tanker caused a huge oil spill that ravaged the coast of Brittany
. Lepage's law firm sided with the local authorities (départements, municipalities...) of Finistère and the Côtes-du-Nord against the American oil company Amoco
.
After a 15-year long trial, Lepage's firm and the local authorities were vindicated, a precedent was thus established giving greater protection to individuals, towns and regions victim of serious pollution.
She then worked on many cases concerning the environment
, along with local associations, groups, companies or local government. Since 2006 Mme Lepage has notably sided with the victims of the Erika
disaster (a 12 December 1999 oil spill) against Total
among others. Since 2010 she supports the "Movement for the Rights and the Respect of Future Generations". She also works as a lawyer for the Association of the Victims of the Floods of La Faute-sur-Mere in wake of Hurricane Xynthia.
of the Observatory for Environmental Vigilance and Alertness.
She also heads the CRIIGEN (Committee for Research and Independent Information on Genetic Engineering), a cutting edge scientific committee on the environmental and health risks of the spread of GMOs.
According to her, politics cannot create on its own, without the mobilisation of NGOs and civil society, the solutions and changes necessary to our economic system. As early as 1996 she said in an interview that "The growing involvement of civil society is essential for the environment and sustainable development". Following the Copenhagen Summit in 2009 she asserted that: "Civil society can now only count on itself to ensure its own future."
Between November 2007 and February 2008, she wrote a report for the French Minister of the Environment, Jean-Louis Borloo
, a report on "environmental governance". This report, according to the official of the Grenelle Environnement
"makes over 80 propositions, including 10 flagship measures, aimed at restoring the confidence of the French in information on the environment" and "proposes notably measures to improve this information, to reinforce rules regarding expertise and clarify liability in case of pollution".
Mme Lepage also teaches at Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines University
and Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris
as a professor of Sustainable Development
.
CRII-VIE, the Association for the Study of the Impact of Genetic Techniques upon the Living.
government (1995–1997), Mme Lepage has sometimes been considered by the media as a right-wing environmentalist, a characterization she does not accept : "They tell me that I am a right-wing environmentalist, no. [...] I am not of the right [...] but I fight for what seems to me to be fundamental for us all in the coming years. [...] The social question was the great debate of the 20th century, I believe the environmental question will be the great debate of the 21st."
Mme Lepage associates herself above all with green and environmentalist politics, attempting to combine ideas of both left and right on environmental issues. From her participation in Ecology Generation in 1990 up to the creation of her own think tank Terre Démocrate in 2009, she shows a desire to "transcend political differenecs" and overcome traditional left/right opposition, in order to "bring people together, beyond their political colors, on the environment". Close at once to Daniel Cohn-Bendit
and François Bayrou
, she works for the emergence of "a genuine pragmatic effort, based on fair and sustainable development, democratic and humanist". She notably wants a rapprochement between centrists and environmentalists.
in Calvados
in March 1989.
In the early 1990s, she became a founding member of Ecology Generation. She ran in the 1993 under this party label for the legislative elections in the fourth district of Calvados
. However, she only received 6.17% of the vote.
to head the Ministry of the Environment in a center-right government. She was then not a member of any political party. According to the left-wing newspaper Libération, her nomination was harshly criticised by the right in Normandy
as she had just recently been beaten severely in elections there.
Mme Lepage was part of twelve women (a high figure at the time) that were part of the first Juppé government. On 7 November 1995, during a cabinet reshuffle leading to the second Juppé government, she was the only woman to remain a full Minister. While she says she did not suffer any particular difficulties as a woman in the government, she deplores the fact that she was subjected to insults in the National Assembly "which would have never have been hurled against a man".
As Minister of the Environment, Mme Lepage made a priority objective of showing that environmentalism can "contribute to the struggle against unemployment". She also made progress in the area of prevention with the adoption of a Clean Air Law, the creation of the Committee on Prevention and Precaution and, at the end state participation with the Professional Committee on Asbestos
.
The extremely controversial relaunch of the Superphénix
nuclear reactor, which experienced numerous technical difficulties, led to an open struggle between Mme Lepage and the Minister of Industry Frank Borotra. Because of legal irregularities, Lepage refused to sign the decree authorizing the relaunch of the reactor, implicitly threatening Alain Juppé with resignation. The trade unionist Christian Moesl said during a parliamentary hearing that "Corinne Lepage put Superphénix on the edge of the precipice and Dominique Voynet
pushed it over".
A consensus politician, Lepage has been subject to criticism for her silence during the president of Jacques Chirac
on certain major environmental issues: the resumption of nuclear tests, the relaunch of the Superphénix nuclear reactor in September 1995, the reduction of the environmental budget, difficulties in implemention the Nature 2000 EU directive...
Lepage used her experiences as a Minister to write a book in which she attacks industrials lobbyies (automobile, nuclear...), hunters and technocrats in the upper levels of the civil service.
with almost a 10% gap between the two candidates (54.50% to 45.50%).
The dissolution of the government in 1997 put an end to her ministerial experience, but not to her fight for humanist ecology. She transformed CAP 21 into a political movement. As Administrator of Transparency International
France [tr. note: a non-governmental organisation which fights government corruption in 80 national sections], she is involved in the fight against political and financial corruption.
In 2002, Mme Lepage launched herself into the Presidential race
and received 1.88% of the vote in the first ballot. In the regional elections of 2004, she was at the top of the list of the Paris départment on the slate of André Santini
(Union for French Democracy
, UDF). She did not participate in the second ballot run-off on the Union for a Popular Movement
(UMP) roster of Jean-François Copé
. In the European election
s of June 2004, her list for the constituency of Ile de France
would receive 3.6%. She was elected to the European Parliament
elected in the 2009 European election
in North-West
constituency as the MoDem
's top candidate.
.
In May 2007, after Bayrou's defeat in the first round of the presidential elections, and the victory of Nicolas Sarkozy
over Ségolène Royal
, Lepaged refused to participate in the Fillon government because of "loyalty to her convictions". Running as a MoDem candidate in the March 2008 municipal elections of the 12th arrondissement of Paris, she got 9.95% of the vote.
Lepage became Vice-President of the MoDem on 15 June 2008. In February 2009, Bayrou made her head of the Modem list for the Northwest district for the 2009 European elections. She was elected as an MEP
with 8.67% of te vote.
Serious tensions emerged between the MoDem and Cap21 when the latter decided to ally itself with Europe Ecologie
in many regions for the March 2010 regional elections.
After have criticized Bayrou's strategy and that of the MoDem, which she called "closed in on itself", she announced that she had left the MoDem on 17 March 2010. At the second round of the regional elections, she called on people to vote for the left, except in Acquitaine where a MoDem candidate was viable. During its party congress of 29 May 2010, Cap21 presents itself as an "autonomous party" and its members vote overwhelmingly to leave the MoDem.
As an MEP of Cap21, she is part of the ALDE
group which includes the MoDem. In July 2009, she became the first vice president of the ENVI Committee(Environment, Public Health and Food Safety) and a substitute member of the ITRE Commission (Industry, Research and Energy) in the European Parliament.
In December 2009, she was the only French MEP in the European Parliament's delegation to the Copenhagen Summit. She expressed dismay at the results of the summit which she considered "a collective failure" to the benefit of "climatoskeptics" and lobbies linked to oil.
Her experience on maritime issues led her to create the "Seas and Coastal Areas" intergroup in the European Parliament. She has presided this intergroup since January 2010.
In June 2009, she protested in front of the Iranian Embassy against the regime alongsideUNEF, SOS Racisme
, Jack Lang
, Nicole Guedj and Marek Halter
. With numerous other personalities, she signed a petition "Stop the Burqa and the Veil, Symbols of the Submission of Women and the Islamist Offensive".
French people
The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...
politician and 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,...
elected in the 2009 European election
European Parliament election, 2009 (France)
European elections to elect 72 French Members of the European Parliament were held on Sunday 7 June 2009.Due to the entry of Romania and Bulgaria in the European Union in 2007, the number of seats allocated to France was revised from 78 seats to 72 seats, a loss of 6 seats...
for the North-West
North-West France (European Parliament constituency)
In European elections, North-West France is a constituency of the European Parliament. It consists of the regions of Basse-Normandie, Haute-Normandie, Nord-Pas-de-Calais and Picardie-2009:-2004:...
constituency.
A former minister of the Environment
Minister of the environment
An environment minister is a cabinet position in charged with protecting the natural environment and promoting wildlife conservation...
, she is the founder and President since 1996 of the Citizenship, Action, Participation for the XXIst Century
Citizenship, Action, Participation for the XXIst Century
The Citizenship, Action, Participation for the 21st Century is a minor green liberal political party in France, founded by Corinne Lepage in 1996 as a political reflection club....
Party (CAP 21). She was also co-founder and Vice-President of the centrist Mouvement démocrate until March 2010, when she announced that she was leaving the movement.
She is also the founding member of the CRII-VIE, the Association for the Study of the Impact of Genetic Techniques upon the Living.
Biography
Lepage was born in Boulogne-BillancourtBoulogne-Billancourt
Boulogne-Billancourt is a commune in the western suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the centre of Paris. Boulogne-Billancourt is a sub-prefecture of the Hauts-de-Seine department and the seat of the Arrondissement of Boulogne-Billancourt....
, in the department
Départements of France
The departments of France are French administrative divisions. The 101 departments form one of the three levels of local government, together with the 22 metropolitan and 5 overseas regions above them and more than 36 000 communes beneath them...
of Hauts-de-Seine
Hauts-de-Seine
Hauts-de-Seine is designated number 92 of the 101 départements in France. It is part of the Île-de-France region, and covers the western inner suburbs of Paris...
. She attended Sciences-Po in Paris, where she obtained her law diploma; she started practising law in 1975. At the same time, she was appointed Maître de conférences (Note: the equivalent of a university lecturer), and later a Professor at Sciences-Po and Paris II from 1982 to 1986, and then at the Université de Paris at Val-deMarne from 1984 to 1990. She has taught at the Université de Paris at St.-Quentin-en-Yvelines since 2005. She is married and the mother of two children.
Expert on environmental law
It is above all as an expert on environmental that Corinne Lepage acquired her reputation, by editing and authoring periodicals and academic works, by speaking on the subject in popular media, and in participating in prominent trials of this legal area.Huglo-Lepage
As a young lawyer, Corinne Lepage married Christian Huglo in 1983 et joined the latter's law firm, the first one specialising in environmental rights. In 1987 she joined the Conseil de l'Ordre des avocats.Her name first began appearing in the media in 1978, during the Amoco Cadiz
Amoco Cadiz
Amoco Cadiz was a very large crude carrier , owned by Amoco, that ran aground on Portsall Rocks, from the coast of Brittany, France, on 16 March 1978, and ultimately split in three and sank, all together resulting in the largest oil spill of its kind in history to that date.-Oil spill:Amoco Cadiz...
disaster. An American oil tanker caused a huge oil spill that ravaged the coast of Brittany
Brittany
Brittany is a cultural and administrative region in the north-west of France. Previously a kingdom and then a duchy, Brittany was united to the Kingdom of France in 1532 as a province. Brittany has also been referred to as Less, Lesser or Little Britain...
. Lepage's law firm sided with the local authorities (départements, municipalities...) of Finistère and the Côtes-du-Nord against the American oil company Amoco
Amoco
Amoco Corporation, originally Standard Oil Company , was a global chemical and oil company, founded in 1889 around a refinery located in Whiting, Indiana, United States....
.
After a 15-year long trial, Lepage's firm and the local authorities were vindicated, a precedent was thus established giving greater protection to individuals, towns and regions victim of serious pollution.
She then worked on many cases concerning the environment
Environmentalism
Environmentalism is a broad philosophy, ideology and social movement regarding concerns for environmental conservation and improvement of the health of the environment, particularly as the measure for this health seeks to incorporate the concerns of non-human elements...
, along with local associations, groups, companies or local government. Since 2006 Mme Lepage has notably sided with the victims of the Erika
Erika
Erika may refer to* Érika Cristiano dos Santos, a female football/ soccer player* Erika , an oil tanker* Erika , a German march* Erika Sawajiri, a Japanese actress and singer who uses the stage name ERIKA as a singer...
disaster (a 12 December 1999 oil spill) against Total
Total
-Mathematics:*Total, the summation of a set of numbers* Total function, a type of partial function in mathematics* Total order, a common total relation in mathematics* Total relation, a type of binary relation in mathematics-Business and enterprise:...
among others. Since 2010 she supports the "Movement for the Rights and the Respect of Future Generations". She also works as a lawyer for the Association of the Victims of the Floods of La Faute-sur-Mere in wake of Hurricane Xynthia.
Environmental activism
Mme Lepage has also defended environmental interests outside of her political career, such as in the Paris and Brussels bar associations and by involvement in numerous NGOs. She is also the co-founded with Michèle RivasiMichèle Rivasi
Michèle Rivasi is Member of the European Parliament, representing South East France for The Greens....
of the Observatory for Environmental Vigilance and Alertness.
She also heads the CRIIGEN (Committee for Research and Independent Information on Genetic Engineering), a cutting edge scientific committee on the environmental and health risks of the spread of GMOs.
According to her, politics cannot create on its own, without the mobilisation of NGOs and civil society, the solutions and changes necessary to our economic system. As early as 1996 she said in an interview that "The growing involvement of civil society is essential for the environment and sustainable development". Following the Copenhagen Summit in 2009 she asserted that: "Civil society can now only count on itself to ensure its own future."
Between November 2007 and February 2008, she wrote a report for the French Minister of the Environment, Jean-Louis Borloo
Jean-Louis Borloo
Jean-Louis Borloo is a French politician, and was the French Minister for Ecology, Energy, Sustainable Development and Town and Country Planning between 2007 and 2010.-Professional résumé:Education...
, a report on "environmental governance". This report, according to the official of the Grenelle Environnement
Grenelle Environnement
The Grenelle de l'environnement is an open multi-party debate in France that brings together representatives of national and local government and organizations on an equal footing, with goal of unifying a position on a specific theme...
"makes over 80 propositions, including 10 flagship measures, aimed at restoring the confidence of the French in information on the environment" and "proposes notably measures to improve this information, to reinforce rules regarding expertise and clarify liability in case of pollution".
Mme Lepage also teaches at Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines University
Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines University
Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines University is a French university, in the Academy of Versailles.- Sciences :Located in Versailles and Le Chesnay....
and Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris
as a professor of Sustainable Development
Sustainable development
Sustainable development is a pattern of resource use, that aims to meet human needs while preserving the environment so that these needs can be met not only in the present, but also for generations to come...
.
CRII-VIE, the Association for the Study of the Impact of Genetic Techniques upon the Living.
Political career
Since her participation in the Alain JuppéAlain Juppé
Alain Marie Juppé is a French politician currently serving as the Minister of Foreign Affairs. He also served as Prime Minister of France from 1995 to 1997 under President Jacques Chirac and the Minister of Defence and Veterans Affairs from 2010 to 2011...
government (1995–1997), Mme Lepage has sometimes been considered by the media as a right-wing environmentalist, a characterization she does not accept : "They tell me that I am a right-wing environmentalist, no. [...] I am not of the right [...] but I fight for what seems to me to be fundamental for us all in the coming years. [...] The social question was the great debate of the 20th century, I believe the environmental question will be the great debate of the 21st."
Mme Lepage associates herself above all with green and environmentalist politics, attempting to combine ideas of both left and right on environmental issues. From her participation in Ecology Generation in 1990 up to the creation of her own think tank Terre Démocrate in 2009, she shows a desire to "transcend political differenecs" and overcome traditional left/right opposition, in order to "bring people together, beyond their political colors, on the environment". Close at once to Daniel Cohn-Bendit
Daniel Cohn-Bendit
Daniel Marc Cohn-Bendit is a Franco-German politician, active in both countries. He was a student leader during the unrest of May 1968 in France and he was also known during that time as Dany le Rouge...
and François Bayrou
François Bayrou
François Bayrou is a French centrist politician, president of Union for French Democracy since 1998 and was a candidate in the 2002 and 2007 French presidential elections. In the first round, he received 18.6% of the vote, finishing in 3rd place and therefore was eliminated from the race....
, she works for the emergence of "a genuine pragmatic effort, based on fair and sustainable development, democratic and humanist". She notably wants a rapprochement between centrists and environmentalists.
Early politics (1981–1995)
Mme Lepage says that "I got into environmentalism very early, in the 1960s. As an environmentalist candidate in 1981, and elected in 1989". Indeed, she became Deputy Mayor of CabourgCabourg
Cabourg is a commune in the Calvados department in the Basse-Normandie region of France.Cabourg belongs to the Paris Basin. The commune is located next to the sea and the back country is a plain, favourable to the cereal culture...
in Calvados
Calvados
The French department of Calvados is part of the region of Basse-Normandie in Normandy. It takes its name from a cluster of rocks off the English Channel coast...
in March 1989.
In the early 1990s, she became a founding member of Ecology Generation. She ran in the 1993 under this party label for the legislative elections in the fourth district of Calvados
Calvados
The French department of Calvados is part of the region of Basse-Normandie in Normandy. It takes its name from a cluster of rocks off the English Channel coast...
. However, she only received 6.17% of the vote.
Minister of the Environment (1995–1997)
In 1995 she responded affirmatively to a proposal by Alain JuppéAlain Juppé
Alain Marie Juppé is a French politician currently serving as the Minister of Foreign Affairs. He also served as Prime Minister of France from 1995 to 1997 under President Jacques Chirac and the Minister of Defence and Veterans Affairs from 2010 to 2011...
to head the Ministry of the Environment in a center-right government. She was then not a member of any political party. According to the left-wing newspaper Libération, her nomination was harshly criticised by the right in Normandy
Normandy
Normandy is a geographical region corresponding to the former Duchy of Normandy. It is in France.The continental territory covers 30,627 km² and forms the preponderant part of Normandy and roughly 5% of the territory of France. It is divided for administrative purposes into two régions:...
as she had just recently been beaten severely in elections there.
Mme Lepage was part of twelve women (a high figure at the time) that were part of the first Juppé government. On 7 November 1995, during a cabinet reshuffle leading to the second Juppé government, she was the only woman to remain a full Minister. While she says she did not suffer any particular difficulties as a woman in the government, she deplores the fact that she was subjected to insults in the National Assembly "which would have never have been hurled against a man".
As Minister of the Environment, Mme Lepage made a priority objective of showing that environmentalism can "contribute to the struggle against unemployment". She also made progress in the area of prevention with the adoption of a Clean Air Law, the creation of the Committee on Prevention and Precaution and, at the end state participation with the Professional Committee on Asbestos
Asbestos
Asbestos is a set of six naturally occurring silicate minerals used commercially for their desirable physical properties. They all have in common their eponymous, asbestiform habit: long, thin fibrous crystals...
.
The extremely controversial relaunch of the Superphénix
Superphénix
Superphénix or SPX was a nuclear power station on the Rhône River at Creys-Malville in France, close to the border with Switzerland. A fast breeder reactor, it halted electricity production in 1996 and was closed as a commercial plant in 1997....
nuclear reactor, which experienced numerous technical difficulties, led to an open struggle between Mme Lepage and the Minister of Industry Frank Borotra. Because of legal irregularities, Lepage refused to sign the decree authorizing the relaunch of the reactor, implicitly threatening Alain Juppé with resignation. The trade unionist Christian Moesl said during a parliamentary hearing that "Corinne Lepage put Superphénix on the edge of the precipice and Dominique Voynet
Dominique Voynet
Dominique Voynet was a French senator for the département of Seine-Saint-Denis, the mayor of Montreuil and a member of The Greens.-Life:...
pushed it over".
A consensus politician, Lepage has been subject to criticism for her silence during the president of Jacques Chirac
Jacques Chirac
Jacques René Chirac is a French politician who served as President of France from 1995 to 2007. He previously served as Prime Minister of France from 1974 to 1976 and from 1986 to 1988 , and as Mayor of Paris from 1977 to 1995.After completing his studies of the DEA's degree at the...
on certain major environmental issues: the resumption of nuclear tests, the relaunch of the Superphénix nuclear reactor in September 1995, the reduction of the environmental budget, difficulties in implemention the Nature 2000 EU directive...
Lepage used her experiences as a Minister to write a book in which she attacks industrials lobbyies (automobile, nuclear...), hunters and technocrats in the upper levels of the civil service.
In search of a viable center(1997–2007)
On the subject of her political leanings, she said "I do not feel that I am woman of the right, but I do not deny in any way my participation in the governments of Alain Juppé." She ran in the May 1997 legislative elections, in Paris' seventh district. She lost in the second round to Patrick BlochePatrick Bloche
Patrick Bloche is a French politician from the Socialist Party.-References:...
with almost a 10% gap between the two candidates (54.50% to 45.50%).
The dissolution of the government in 1997 put an end to her ministerial experience, but not to her fight for humanist ecology. She transformed CAP 21 into a political movement. As Administrator of Transparency International
Transparency International
Transparency International is a non-governmental organization that monitors and publicizes corporate and political corruption in international development. It publishes an annual Corruption Perceptions Index, a comparative listing of corruption worldwide...
France [tr. note: a non-governmental organisation which fights government corruption in 80 national sections], she is involved in the fight against political and financial corruption.
In 2002, Mme Lepage launched herself into the Presidential race
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...
and received 1.88% of the vote in the first ballot. In the regional elections of 2004, she was at the top of the list of the Paris départment on the slate of André Santini
André Santini
André Santini is a French politician, mayor of Issy-les-Moulineaux, Hauts-de-Seine.A former member of the UDF, he did not support François Bayrou, the candidate of his party for the first round of 2007 French presidential election, choosing instead to support Nicolas Sarkozy.After the election, he...
(Union for French Democracy
Union for French Democracy
The Union for French Democracy was a French centrist political party. It was founded in 1978 as an electoral alliance to support President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing in order to counterbalance the Gaullist preponderance over the right. This name was chosen due to the title of Giscard d'Estaing's...
, UDF). She did not participate in the second ballot run-off on the Union for a Popular Movement
Union for a Popular Movement
The Union for a Popular Movement is a centre-right political party in France, and one of the two major contemporary political parties in the country along with the center-left Socialist Party...
(UMP) roster of Jean-François Copé
Jean-François Copé
Jean-François Copé , is a French politician. He is currently Mayor of Meaux, Deputy for the 6th constituency of Seine-et-Marne, and acts as President of the Union for a Popular Movement Group in the French National Assembly...
. In the European election
European Parliament election, 2004
Elections to the European Parliament were held from 10 June 2004 to 13 June 2004 in the 25 member states of the European Union, using varying election days according to local custom...
s of June 2004, her list for the constituency of Ile de France
Île-de-France (région)
Île-de-France is the wealthiest and most populated of the twenty-two administrative regions of France, composed mostly of the Paris metropolitan area....
would receive 3.6%. She was elected to the European Parliament
European Parliament
The European Parliament is the directly elected parliamentary institution of the European Union . Together with the Council of the European Union and the Commission, it exercises the legislative function of the EU and it has been described as one of the most powerful legislatures in the world...
elected in the 2009 European election
European Parliament election, 2009 (France)
European elections to elect 72 French Members of the European Parliament were held on Sunday 7 June 2009.Due to the entry of Romania and Bulgaria in the European Union in 2007, the number of seats allocated to France was revised from 78 seats to 72 seats, a loss of 6 seats...
in North-West
North-West France (European Parliament constituency)
In European elections, North-West France is a constituency of the European Parliament. It consists of the regions of Basse-Normandie, Haute-Normandie, Nord-Pas-de-Calais and Picardie-2009:-2004:...
constituency as the MoDem
Democratic Movement (France)
The Democratic Movement , MoDem) is a centrist, social liberal and pro-European French political party that was founded by centrist politician François Bayrou to succeed his Union for French Democracy and to contest the 2007 legislative election, after his strong showing in the 2007 presidential...
's top candidate.
With François Bayrou (2007–2010)
On March 10 2007, she chose not run in the 2007 presidential elections, in order to support François Bayrou. She said that Bayrou "represents today genuine change in this country, which can allow political ecology to have the place it needs." Cap21 was then one of the founding groups of the François Bayrou's new political party, the MoDemModem
A modem is a device that modulates an analog carrier signal to encode digital information, and also demodulates such a carrier signal to decode the transmitted information. The goal is to produce a signal that can be transmitted easily and decoded to reproduce the original digital data...
.
In May 2007, after Bayrou's defeat in the first round of the presidential elections, and the victory of Nicolas Sarkozy
Nicolas Sarkozy
Nicolas Sarkozy is the 23rd and current President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra. He assumed the office on 16 May 2007 after defeating the Socialist Party candidate Ségolène Royal 10 days earlier....
over Ségolène Royal
Ségolène Royal
Marie-Ségolène Royal , known as Ségolène Royal, is a French politician. She is the president of the Poitou-Charentes Regional Council, a former member of the National Assembly, a former government minister, and a prominent member of the French Socialist Party...
, Lepaged refused to participate in the Fillon government because of "loyalty to her convictions". Running as a MoDem candidate in the March 2008 municipal elections of the 12th arrondissement of Paris, she got 9.95% of the vote.
Lepage became Vice-President of the MoDem on 15 June 2008. In February 2009, Bayrou made her head of the Modem list for the Northwest district for the 2009 European elections. She was elected as an MEP
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,...
with 8.67% of te vote.
Serious tensions emerged between the MoDem and Cap21 when the latter decided to ally itself with Europe Ecologie
Europe Écologie
Europe Écologie was a French electoral coalition created for the 2009 European elections composed of The Greens and other ecologists and regionalists....
in many regions for the March 2010 regional elections.
After have criticized Bayrou's strategy and that of the MoDem, which she called "closed in on itself", she announced that she had left the MoDem on 17 March 2010. At the second round of the regional elections, she called on people to vote for the left, except in Acquitaine where a MoDem candidate was viable. During its party congress of 29 May 2010, Cap21 presents itself as an "autonomous party" and its members vote overwhelmingly to leave the MoDem.
Member of the European Parliament (June 2009–present)
Lepage was elected to the European Parliament in June 2009. After the poor score of the MoDem in these elections (8.46%) she called for an alliance in the Parliament between the MoDem and Europe Ecologie.As an MEP of Cap21, she is part of the ALDE
Alde
Alde is a village in Suffolk, England.ALDE is also an auction house specialized in books, manuscripts and coins : ....
group which includes the MoDem. In July 2009, she became the first vice president of the ENVI Committee(Environment, Public Health and Food Safety) and a substitute member of the ITRE Commission (Industry, Research and Energy) in the European Parliament.
In December 2009, she was the only French MEP in the European Parliament's delegation to the Copenhagen Summit. She expressed dismay at the results of the summit which she considered "a collective failure" to the benefit of "climatoskeptics" and lobbies linked to oil.
Her experience on maritime issues led her to create the "Seas and Coastal Areas" intergroup in the European Parliament. She has presided this intergroup since January 2010.
In June 2009, she protested in front of the Iranian Embassy against the regime alongsideUNEF, SOS Racisme
SOS Racisme
SOS Racisme is a French anti-racist NGO, founded in 1984. Its Spanish counterpart, SOS Racismo, is based in Barcelona.-Activities:SOS Racisme's main goal is to fight racial discrimination. Often the plaintiff in discrimination trials, the organization also offers support to immigrants and racial...
, Jack Lang
Jack Lang (French politician)
Jack Mathieu Émile Lang is a French politician. A member of the Socialist Party, he served as France's Minister of Culture from 1981 to 1986 and 1988 to 1992, and as Minister of Education from 1992 to 1993 and 2000 to 2002. He was also the Mayor of Blois from 1989 to 2000...
, Nicole Guedj and Marek Halter
Marek Halter
Marek Halter is a French-Jewish novelist. He was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1936. During World War II, he and his parents escaped from the Warsaw Ghetto and fled to the Soviet Union, spending the remainder of the war in Ukraine, Moscow and later in Kokand, Uzbekistan...
. With numerous other personalities, she signed a petition "Stop the Burqa and the Veil, Symbols of the Submission of Women and the Islamist Offensive".
Highlights
- 1989, she became a deputy mayor of CabourgCabourgCabourg is a commune in the Calvados department in the Basse-Normandie region of France.Cabourg belongs to the Paris Basin. The commune is located next to the sea and the back country is a plain, favourable to the cereal culture...
in CalvadosCalvadosThe French department of Calvados is part of the region of Basse-Normandie in Normandy. It takes its name from a cluster of rocks off the English Channel coast...
(resigned in 2001). - 1995, she became first deputy to the Mayor of Cabourg.
- 1995, named Minister of the Environment in the government of Alain JuppéAlain JuppéAlain Marie Juppé is a French politician currently serving as the Minister of Foreign Affairs. He also served as Prime Minister of France from 1995 to 1997 under President Jacques Chirac and the Minister of Defence and Veterans Affairs from 2010 to 2011...
(~1997). She became one of the so-called "Juppettes." - 1998, creation of the Citizenship Action Participation for the Twenty-First Century Party.
- April 21 2002, candidate in the presidential election, she carried 1.88% of the vote.
- 2007, declared as candidate in the presidential elections, decides (on March 11) not to run and instead to support François BayrouFrançois BayrouFrançois Bayrou is a French centrist politician, president of Union for French Democracy since 1998 and was a candidate in the 2002 and 2007 French presidential elections. In the first round, he received 18.6% of the vote, finishing in 3rd place and therefore was eliminated from the race....
for this election.
Works
- Code annoté de procédures administratives contentieuses (1990) ("The Annotated Code of Administrative Litigation Procedures")
- Les audits d'environnement (1992) ("The Environment Audits")
- On ne peut rien faire, madame le Ministre (1998) ("We Can't Do Anything About It, Minister")
- Bien gérer l'environnement, une chance pour l'entreprise (1999) ("Managing the Environment Well, a Business Opportunity")
- La politique de précaution (with François Guéry, 2000) ("Precautionary Politics")
- Oser l'espérance (2001) ("Daring to Hope")
- Santé & Environnement : l'ABCdaire (2005) ("Health and the Environment: the ABCs")
- ECORESP 2006 (2006)
- Déficit public: le patrimoine des français en péril (2011)
External links
- Corinne Lepage campaign site for the 2008 mayoral elections (in French)
- Corinne Lepage Blog (in French)
- This is a translation of the French Wikipédia article :fr:Corinne Lepage.