Editing The Greens (France) (section)

===Participation in government===
Waechter's influence was called into question in 1994 when the Greens decided to break with his policy of non-alignment, instead deciding to adopt a markedly left-wing stance. The move prompted Waechter to leave the Greens. He went on to found the [[Independent Ecological Movement]]. In the following presidential election of 1995, [[Dominique Voynet]] polled a modest 3.8% but, in due to the marginalisation of [[Ecology Generation]], the Greens captured the leadership into the family of the French [[political ecology]].

Component of [[Plural Left]] coalition, the Greens obtained for the first time a parliamentary representation in [[1997 French legislative election|1997]]. [[Dominique Voynet]] was to lead the party into government for the first time, joining [[Lionel Jospin]]'s [[Socialist Party (France)|Socialist Party]] (PS) and the [[French Communist Party|Communist Party]] (PCF). Voynet was rewarded with the cabinet position of Minister for the Environment and Regional Planning, before being replaced by [[Yves Cochet]] in 2001.

[[Daniel Cohn-Bendit]] (or "Danny the Red"), a leader of the [[May 1968 in France|1968 student uprising]], spearheaded the party's [[1999 European Parliament election in France|1999 European campaign]], obtaining 9.7% of votes cast, enough to return seven deputies to [[Strasbourg]].

[[Alain Lipietz]] was first selected to represent the Greens in the [[2002 French presidential election|2002 presidential elections]] but his public outings proved awkward and he was soon replaced by [[Noël Mamère]] who had initially lost the [[Partisan primary|primary election]]s. Mamère's 5.25% represents the strongest Green challenge for the presidency to date. However, the legislative elections were a major disappointment: with just 4.51% of votes cast nationally, the Greens’ representation fell from six to just three deputies (out of a total of 577) in the [[French National Assembly|National Assembly]].