Marine Tondelier

Marine Tondelier is a French politician and national secretary of The Ecologists since 2022. She was elected to this role after, winning at 90.8% of the vote in the second round of the party's congress on 10 December 2022.

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Early life and career

Tondelier was born in Bois-Bernard, Pas-de-Calais, France on 23 August 1986. She grew up in Hénin-Beaumont, the sixth largest town in Pas-de-Calais, raised by a homeopathic doctor father and a dentist mother. Her grandparents were pharmacists in Hénin-Liétard and farmers in Beaumont-en-Artois.
She graduated from Sciences Po Lille in 2009 from the public careers track, then earned a masters degree in healthcare management.
She gained her first professional experience through internships at the French Embassy in Stockholm, IGAS, and Greater Paris University Hospitals. Then she was the parliamentary assistant to EELV Senator Aline Archimbaud from 2011 to 2015, for whom she notably followed health and social policy issues, then to Cécile Duflot from 2015 to 2017. From 2017 to 2022, she was general delegate for the French regulator overseeing approved air quality monitoring agencies at the national level.

Political career

Tondelier began her political career in 2009 and ran on the Greens list in partial municipal elections after the Socialist mayor, Gérard Dalongeville, was removed for misuse of public funds, corruption, forgery, and use of forged documents. The list, led by Régine Calzia, was not successful winning only 8.72% of the vote in the first round behind the National Front's Steeve Briois and an independent left-wing candidate.
In 2012, she was presented as the The Ecologists candidate for the National Assembly in Pas-de-Calais's 11th constituency running against a Socialist candidate as well as Marine Le Pen and left-wing Jean-Luc Mélenchon. She denounced the exploitation of the situation in Hénin-Beaumont by the two national leaders in a debate stating that they would not benefit the constituency: "The mining region is tired, it's angry, and it's becoming furious." She obtained 1.63% of the vote in the first round which was won by Le Pen with the Socialist candidate Philippe Kemel coming in second place before defeating Le Pen by 118 votes in the second round.
In 2015, she ran in the 2015 French departmental elections in the 11th constuency of the Canton of Hénin-Beaumont with her pair obtaining 6.50% of the vote in the first round. She was then chosen to lead a joint list between EELV and Left Party in the 2015 Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie regional election, winning 4.83% of the vote in the first round.
She was again the EELV candidate in the Pas-de-Calais's 11th constituency in the 2017 French legislative election, this time winning 3.55% before being eliminated in the first round. In the 2019 European Parliament election in France, she was included in the EELV list which won 13.48% of the vote and won 13 seats.
She again was a candidate in the Pas-de-Calais's 11th constituency for the 2022 French legislative election, this time supported by the New Ecological and Social People's Union (NUPES) alliance parties. She advanced from the first round in second place with 23% of the vote and lost to Marine Le Pen in the second round winning 39% of the vote.
In 2024, she became head of The Ecologists.

Views

In June 2023, a French police union said they were at war with "vermin". Unions representing half of French police added that unless officers enjoy still greater legal protection and more resources in the future, "tomorrow we will be in resistance". Marine Tondelier described it as “an appeal for civil war”.
On 12 November 2023, she took part in the March for the Republic and Against Antisemitism in Paris in response to the rise in antisemitism since the start of the Gaza war.