Julien Bayou, national secretary of Europe ecology-Les Verts, said it himself during the videoconference presentation of the list of the Ecologist Pole for the regional election of June 13 and 20, 2021 in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté: Stéphanie Modde, who will lead it, “is not very well known” but “deserves to be known”. Original in form, but rather awkward in substance, the remark of the ecological tent leader, if it applies to the Franche-Comté side, turns out to be unfair, on the Burgundian side, for this 52-year-old activist who sits at the town hall of Dijon and had already carried out a regional mandate at the time when François Patriat presided over “the other half” of the now Greater Region.
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She claims her “very modest origin”
Stéphanie Modde, it is obvious, first of all embodies political ecology. But this “fourth” of seven siblings is also clearly visible from the left. Because the activist proudly claims her “very modest origin” with a worker father and a stay-at-home mother who took care of the family. It was in Reims, before she moved to Dijon. “I was interested in the information and documentation professions, I applied to several IUTs in eastern France, since, when you come from a working-class background, studies are what are fine, ”she says.
The favorable response, accompanied especially by a place in Cité U, came to her from the capital of Côte d’Or where she landed with her suitcases in 1986. “I had Jean-François Bazin as a teacher”, s ‘she laughs. In other words, this journalist and writer who in 1993 became the RPR president of the Burgundy region then, two years later, the first deputy mayor of Dijon.
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“In principle, I should have been born in May 1968”
Was it this subliminal influence that prompted her to enter politics? Undoubtedly not, especially since Stéphanie Modde came there through associative life. “In principle, I should have been born in May 1968”, specifies the one who would have liked the symbol. Alas, her mother gave birth to her eight days earlier. Her diploma from the University Institute in her pocket, the young woman, supervisor of a boarding school to pay for her studies, takes the path of the faculty of art history and archeology, course leading to a master’s degree.
His goal at the time: to be a National Education librarian. “I vaguely tried the competition and I did not succeed …”. It is the socio-cultural animation, in the service of the town hall and associations, which opens to it during three years. Between 1996 and 2001, she also conceived her two children, a girl then a boy. “One born in the 20th century, the other in the 21st,” she notes. “In 2050, a very symbolic year in terms of global warming, they will be as old as I am today. This is what I am fighting for. “
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“It was the time of the great Stade de Reims, I was rocked in football”
Upstream of politics, however, it is an association of Dijon cyclists, EVAD , which she joins with her spouse. “The association is a family tradition. I have a severely disabled brother and my mother was an activist in this area. As for my father, it was football, he was very invested. »Silent smile. ” It was the era of the great Stade de Reims , my childhood was rocked by the Reims / Saint-Etienne matches… ”, she slips greedily, balloons in her eyes.
In 1995, The Greens (not those of Robert Herbin) set up a first list to counter Robert Poujade in the municipal elections. Stéphanie Modde is in demand. But the one who was, in January 1971, the Prime Minister of the Protection of Nature and the Environment, the “ministry of the impossible” he wrote, was indestructible. The ecological epic of Jean-Patrick Masson and his family ends with a small 3.64% of the votes.
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The clash
But here we go! Stéphanie Modde took her card from the Greens and, for a quarter of a century, made her obstacle course there: a departmental post, a deputy regional secretariat, a seat at the CNIR, the bubbling internal parliament of the party.
At the same time, she successfully passed another competition and became an integration advisor and then business advisor within a public body. In 2003, she felt “ready to be elected”. Thanks to the agreement concluded between Les Verts and François Patriat, she joined the Burgundy region, in the vocational training and apprenticeship commission.
When the establishment of poles of excellence endows the Saône-et-Loire with a nuclear pole, mid-term, it is the clash. “The hypothesis had not been discussed during the negotiations, since it did not exist”, sighs the one who would have preferred that the Region finance alternative energies rather than the atom. The ecologists leave the majority, Dominique Voynet rushes to Dijon to try to restore the link with François Patriat. Stormy sequence. The Greens will return to the executive two years later, but in less good shape.
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“The bottom of the wave for environmentalists with latent internal wars”
In 2008, Stéphanie Modde arrived at the Palais des Ducs. Elected on François Rebsamen’s union list, then re-elected under the same conditions in 2014, she became deputy for urban ecology and delegate in 2018 for biodiversity to the urban community which preceded the metropolis.
In 2020, the pact is broken. EELV launches with a stand-alone list. “After 2014 was not a good period, we had to fight all day long for not much and anyway, it was the bottom of the wave for environmentalists with latent internal wars”, explains the candidate. Obviously, François Rebsamen is not of this opinion.
Another click: during Europeans in 2019 , Yannick Jadot obtained 16.72% of the vote in Dijon. Added to the success of the climate marches, EELV turns as usual into euphoria mode. ” We wanted go further, in an ambitious ecology “, she says. In the first round, François Rebsamen leads with 38.25%. Stéphanie Modde has to reckon with a competing ecological list which makes 3.76% of the votes and is satisfied with 15.10% of the votes cast.
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“We declined, these positions were not important”
“I thought we would be asked between the two rounds for a discussion,” she admits, with this honorable result. Except that François Rebsamen refuses any rallying, as Jean-Yves Le Drian had once done in the Brittany Region when Jospin’s former EELV Secretary of State, Guy Hascoët, dared the same strategy. Socialist success assured in both cases. François Rebsamen is easily re-elected as part of a triangular with 43.52% and Stéphanie Modde, with 21.63%, finds its 6 elected at the start, but in opposition. Good prince, the mayor offers him two deputy positions and a seat in the metropolis, a unique post-electoral partnership. “We declined, these positions were not important,” she says. His score makes him dangle a brighter tomorrow, at the regional level this time. With the expanded Environmental Pole, the candidate hopes to lead the left in the first round and then gather widely in the second, but on her terms.
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The big dates of Stéphanie Modde
22 avril 1968, born in Reims
1986, student at the IUT of Dijon
1991-1995, Dijon faculty and master
1995, membership at Les Verts
1996-2001, sociocultural facilitator
1996, birth of her daughter, 2001, of his son
2004, regional councilor on François Patriat’s list
2008 and 2014, elected municipal on the list of François Rebsamen
2020, EELV candidate for Dijon city hall
2021, head of the list Environmental pole in the regional election
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