Cyrielle Chatelain, the unknown green to follow

Just after the second round of the legislative elections, an influential environmental adviser sent a message to his entire address book of journalists: “You probably don’t know Cyrielle Chatelain, but I encourage you to discover her, because she’s really a very high quality person. This woman then not quite 35 years old has just been elected EELV-Nupes deputy for Isère and co-president of the environmental group, with Julien Bayou. “I insisted because knowing how a pair is organized between a media man and a working woman, we knew that she was going to work and that Bayou would have the microphones, he explains today. I am not an intimate, but I knew that she was super hardworking, brilliant, efficient…”

Compliments are raining on Cyrielle Chatelain, who will be the first speaker of the New People’s Ecological and Social Union this Monday to defend the first motion of censure against the first 49.3 actuated by the government, on the first part of the finance bill (PLF ). Unknown to the general public and a long-time environmental activist, her parents were left-wing activists – and, very quickly, environmentalists -: “They were supporters of Greenpeace and the anti-nuclear fight”, recalls the new MP. Hence his “logical” and marked commitment… to the left. “When you’re an ecologist and you fight to have a habitable planet, you fight for sharing, says Chatelain. And for that, we have to confront our capitalist economic model. »

“Eco first language”

“She speaks eco-first language,” says David Cormand, MEP and former national secretary of EELV, from 2016 to 2019. place them at the ideological center of the party, of which she “knows the lines and mysteries well”, specifies Cormand. “She played a role, not at the forefront but important, in decisive stages, he recalls. Not being in the show, it made it possible to stabilize certain things that were a little tactico-creative…” In 2014, she campaigned for example so that EELV did not return to the Valls government after the departures of Cécile Duflot and Pascal Canfin.

Committed to the issue of housing, Cyrielle Chatelain wanted to make her work consistent with her activism. And logically, the political world called her. In 2012, when environmentalists had a group in the Assembly for the first time, she wanted “absolutely to be part of the adventure, it was the return of the left to power and we had an ecologist at Housing [Cécile Duflot], it was huge! “The group of collaborators was the strong link in the system at the time, strong people,” notes David Cormand. In 2015, she moved from the legislative to the executive, entering the office of the president of the metropolis of Grenoble, with “the desire to see how things are put in place”. And it doesn’t take long: she works on the Alur law and finds herself at the helm to apply it in the field.

In the vein of Eric Piolle

Cyrielle Chatelain deals in particular with the accommodation of the homeless – “a subject that can only be dealt with in theory” – and does marauding with the Samu social de Grenoble. “At some point, the subject is binary: do people have a roof or not? It seemed important to me to do so. “It is this radicalism, which the mayor of Grenoble, Eric Piolle, also claims, whom she supported during the 2021 primary: “The real radicalism is that which we manage to implement, believes the young MP. And that does not mean that she is watered down” Her temperament was then spotted by Bruno Bernard, the EELV president of the Lyon Metropolis, from 2020: recruiting her to his cabinet is a priority: “I had noticed her discretion, seriousness, intelligence. »

In this position, she works with the socialist mayor of Villeurbanne, vice-president in charge of Culture in the Metropolis, Cédric Van Styvandael. He has “extremely positive memories of her. She is super professional. Technical and quite political, it’s rare for someone who works in a firm to have both”. His constituency, in the red suburbs of Grenoble, is winnable. But if we are rather on the left, we are not necessarily green. Chatelain chooses a rebellious substitute: “We had to unite, find a local balance. She has shown political intelligence, ”judges Bruno Bernard, who “regrets” her to his cabinet.

“The right person in the right place”

If Cyrielle Chatelain became co-president of the environmental group last June, it is ultimately because she is one of the most experienced in the group. “She knows what she is talking about when it comes to governing,” says Marie-Charlotte Garin, EELV deputy for Lyon. And then, among the elected EELV, apart from Eva Sas, no one has ever been a deputy. “However, knowing the rules of the game matters, recalls a close friend of Yannick Jadot. You can be great, but when you arrive, you don’t necessarily have in mind that the most important thing is the rules of the Assembly. The return of ecologists to the Palais-Bourbon is nevertheless chaotic. The recruitment of collaborators is difficult, and especially the Julien Bayou affair, against a backdrop of accusations of psychological violence, fails to blow up the collective.

“She was as good as she could be given the media exposure, the issues and especially the personalities present”, thinks, from the outside, David Cormand. Inside, we praise his “great sense of the collective, of finesse, of righteousness”, as Marie-Charlotte Garin puts it. It is “the right person in the right place”, believes Benjamin Lucas, deputy of Yvelines. “She discussed with each other and was able to calm the situation”, says Sandrine Rousseau, the deputy for Paris, with less enthusiasm, according to whom her sense of the collective, so much praised by all the people contacted, “should be consolidate thereafter.

From the shadow to the light

For some, the fact of seeing her today as the only president of the group, without the question of finding her a new partner having arisen, proves her solidity. “Despite her diplomacy and gentleness, she has a firm grip,” remarks Sandra Regol, MP for Strasbourg and long-time friend. No wonder for Cédric Van Styvandael, according to whom she “resists the pressure quite well”. Illustration: the evening of the press conference of Julien Bayou’s lawyer, she is one of the rare ecologists to call back the journalists who solicit her. Two days later, when it would have been easy for her to cancel a long-standing stalled meeting with journalists, she comes. And stays straight in her boots despite a “humanly difficult situation”: “The question is the political response” on sexist and sexual violence, she told us then.

“She has always been in the shadows to push others, me for example, describes Sandra Regol. People who put themselves at the service of others, that’s very good, but it’s also good that we can in turn put ourselves at their service. The light, it will be there in full center by carrying this Monday the accusation of the government in the name of Nupes. “I found it quite good during the debate on the general policy speech, observes Bruno Bernard. For a first intervention, I was blown away. »

“Don’t miss the steps”

This time, the pressure is stronger. “There is pressure with every speech, cuts the Grenoble woman. We wear something other than ourselves. During the response to the general policy speech, it was how to organize the return of the voice of ecology in the Assembly. There, it will be a question of talking about the bottom: the budget, it is there that all the choices are made. On inflation as on the fact of not exceeding 3°C of warming in ten years, this is where it happens. »

A mark of confidence from the Nupes allies with which she is “very comfortable”. Her socialist counterpart, Boris Vallaud, finds her “intelligent and structured”. “Cyrielle is precise, there are not 15,000 possible interpretations of what she says. It is square, does not flee the conflict, it must be extremely appreciable for the partners ”, advances a close friend of Yannick Jadot already quoted.

As for the rest, “it would benefit from taking the liberty, to affirm its political options and its line even more, believes David Cormand. But it will come” Sandra Regol sees a great future for her, without further details. Cyrielle Chatelain is careful not to put formal limits to her ambition, but temporizes immediately: “I do what I have always done when I took on high-stakes positions: do the best possible. My goal is for ecology to be stronger in five years thanks to the environmental group. If we can’t do it, we can always project ourselves… You have to know how to be in what you’re doing, not miss the steps. Steps, she will already climb at 4 p.m., to climb to the podium of the Assembly in the name of Nupes. She knows the way.