EELV management meets with cell against sexual violence after revelations of “liberation

The boss who resigned from the party would have been the subject, for three years, of a “surveillance” on the part of feminist activists outside any formal framework, according to the newspaper.

Le Monde with AFP

Europe Ecologie-les Verts (EELV) does not seem to finish with the Bayou affair. The ecological party brought together, on Saturday 1 October, its executive office and the internal cell responsible for investigating violence against women. This decision follows a liberation article revealing that Julien Bayou, who resigned from his duties as national secretary after accusations of psychological violence against an ex-partner, was under the” surveillance “of party feminist activists .

“The information published in Libé confirms the need to think about the best way to deal with this particular case,” said a source close to management at the France-Presse agency. “It is normal that the information in this article is taken into account and processed politically,” added another EELV official.

According to the Liberation Investigation, Julien Bayou has been the subject, for three years, of the close surveillance of environmental and feminist activists, outside of any formal framework. According to the newspaper, several women who had sentimental relations with the boss of EELV were contacted with the aim of ensuring his behavior towards women, and then protecting his partner from possible inappropriate behaviors . A WhatsApp loop would have been formed for this purpose.

Alerted by an email from a former partner of Julien Bayou, the EELV cell devoted to gender -based and sexual violence was autoisie at the end of June, according to Liberation. According to the newspaper, one of the women members of this cell responsible for dealing with the reports of sexual and sexist violence in the party is also part of the informal group having targeted the privacy of Julien Bayou.

“The cell does what it can”

On September 19, the feminist collective #noustoutes Party on this subject on Twitter . The case took a very important echo a few hours later, with the declarations of Sandrine Rousseau on France 5. The EELV deputy of Paris evoked, on the part of Julien Bayou, “behaviors likely to break the moral health of women “.

On September 26, Julien Bayou resigned under pressure, despite the absence of a complaint and a judicial investigation against him. The meeting of Saturday aims to approach “the question of procedures in general and of the collective capacity to establish them in a stable, reliable, perennial, efficient manner”, according to an official who requested anonymity. “The cell [against sexist and sexual violence] does what it can. We are on subjects about which there are no nomenclatures or established procedures”, but “we cannot reduce a strategy of victorious struggle to individual, sometimes approximate initiatives, “he adds.