The Luxembourg Palace renewed almost half of its seats on Sunday (170 out of 348), confirming the majority of the right and center. While most outgoing senators have been re-elected, a few new faces are preparing to take their first steps in the Upper House. Le Figaro focuses on six of them.
The glass and steel of the European Parliament will soon give way to the gilding of the Luxembourg Palace for Yannick Jadot. Elected this Sunday, the brand new senator Europe Écologie-Les Verts (EELV) leaves Strasbourg prematurely to take up his position as senator of Paris. Some attribute to him ambitions for the town hall of Paris, ambitions if not denied, at least deferred. Questioned this Monday morning on Franceinfo, Yannick Jadot defends himself against any electoral strategy for 2026: “When you run a senatorial campaign and you are elected senator, it is to be senator.”
At 56, the man who was director of campaigns for Greenpeace France from 2002 to 2008, has been pursuing his ecological commitment in Strasbourg since 2009, where he previously served as an EELV MEP. But, due to internal partisan regulations, the former candidate for the 2022 presidential election cannot run for a fourth term in the European Parliament. A welcome new life as a senator.
She took her revenge. Ousted from eligible places on her party’s list, the powerful boss of the LR federation in Paris, Agnès Evren, presented herself in dissent from the group led by Rachida Dati. A successful bet, since the former spokesperson for Valérie Pécresse in 2022 won a seat in the capital on Sunday.
Supported by the centrists, Agnès Evren should however swell the ranks of the right-wing senatorial majority, confirmed during the partial renewal of the Upper House. Like Yannick Jadot, she must leave the European Parliament in Strasbourg, where she has only been sitting since 2019.
PCF spokesperson Ian Brossat also takes his very first steps at the Luxembourg Palace. Anne Hidalgo’s housing deputy is now a senator for the capital. After three unhappy legislative campaigns in 2007, 2012 and 2017 and a resounding failure in the 2019 European elections, the third candidate on the “Rally of the Left and Environmentalists” list – who obtained 54.58% of the vote – was almost certain to be elected to the Senate.
This 43-year-old associate professor of modern literature led Fabien Roussel’s presidential campaign in 2022, reaching 2.28% of the vote in the first round.
It happened in a pocket handkerchief. In Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, where only 39 electors were called to the polls, the former Minister of Seas and Overseas Territories (2017-2020), Annick Girardin, became senator by three small votes. It is in this archipelago of eight islands that this member of the Radical Party (PRV) won her first mandate as a deputy in 2007.
The former Minister of the Civil Service under François Hollande will sit within the Macronist European Democratic and Social Rally (RDSE) group, which should have around twenty parliamentarians. Not enough to make us forget the setback inflicted in New Caledonia on the only member of the government in the running, Sonia Backès (Citizenship), beaten by the Kanak separatist, Robert Xowie.
From the bar to the bays of the Palais du Luxembourg. The former lawyer and LR mayor of the 16th arrondissement, Francis Szpiner, was elected senator of Paris on Sunday. Unlike his colleague Agnès Evren, he appeared on the official list of the group led by Rachida Dati.
The former advisor to Jacques Chirac at the Élysée missed the boat in the last legislative elections by losing in the capital to the Macronist Benjamin Haddad. Last December, during the election of the president of LR, Francis Szpiner supported the candidacy of the boss of the right in the Senate, Bruno Retailleau.
At 29, environmentalist Mathilde Ollivier became the youngest member of the Senate this Sunday. Within a few months, she therefore won the title from the socialist Rémi Cardon, born like her in 1994 and aged 26 when she was elected in 2020. Now a senator for French people established outside France, the Breton explained at the microphone of Public Senate not living in France for ten years. Mathilde Ollivier settled in Vienna, Austria, four years ago, becoming an advisor for French expatriates two years later.
Engaged in politics since the climate marches of 2018, the elected EELV always spoke on Public Senate about the issues of her election: “As a young woman elected to the Senate (…), it is important for me to represent the climate generation and to have representation and renewal of our institutions.”
