Michèle Rivasi


Michèle Rivasi is a French politician who has been serving as a Member of the European Parliament since 2009, for Europe Écologie–The Greens.

Education and early career

An alumna of the École normale supérieure de lettres et sciences humaines, Rivasi worked as a biology teacher.

Political career

Career in national politics

In 1986 Rivasi founded the Commission for Independent Research and Information on Radioactivity following the Chernobyl disaster.
Rivasi represented the Drôme's 1st constituency between 1997 and 2002. She was classified as an independent ecologist close to the PS, but has since joined Europe Écologie–The Greens.
From September 2003 to November 2004, she was the director of Greenpeace in France.

Member of the European Parliament, 2009–present

In 2009, The Greens selected Rivasi to lead the Europe Écologie list in the South-East constituency ahead of the 2009 European elections, in addition to which she is an assistant to the Mayor of Valence, and a member of the General Council of the Drôme.
In parliament, Rivasi has served on the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy, the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety and the Special Committee on the European Union's authorisation procedure for pesticides. Since the 2019 elections, she has been serving on the Committee on Development and the Committee on Budgetary Control. From 2010 until 2011, she notably served as the Parliament's rapporteur on measures to co-ordinate the European response to health crises such as the 2009 flu pandemic. In 2020, she also joined the Special Committee on Beating Cancer.
In addition to her committee assignments, Rivasi has also been part of the Parliament's delegation to the ACP–EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly since 2009. She is also a member of the European Parliament Intergroup on the Welfare and Conservation of Animals
Ahead of the 2017 French presidential election, Rivasi ran for her party's nomination for the presidency but eventually lost in the final round of the primaries against Yannick Jadot.

Political positions

Rivasi describes herself as “vaccination skeptic”. She is a strong supporter of alternative medicine and homeopathy. She opposes the planned Midi-Catalonia pipeline that would more than double the amount of gas that can be piped across the Pyrenees mountains that border Spain and France.

Controversy

In February 2019, Rivasi was one of four Green MEPs who were temporarily arrested after breaking into the Kleine Brogel Air Base to protest against the presence of U.S. B61 nuclear bombs on European soil; the protest followed the U.S. withdrawal from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty earlier that month.