Marine Tondelier, leader of the ecologists and candidate in the 2027 presidential election, announced on Monday that she is three months pregnant, calling it a “miracle” after a miscarriage and unsuccessful fertility treatments. “I am going through a contrasting period. Difficult on the political side, but very happy on a personal level, since I am expecting a child, news that fills me with joy, even though it took me by surprise,” explained Marine Tondelier, already a mother to a son, in an interview with Elle magazine published on Monday. “A pregnant campaign, it was challenging,” shared the 39-year-old national secretary of the ecologists, post the municipal elections. “It is also a relief to announce my pregnancy today. Since January, I felt like I was leading a double life.”
The ecologists’ candidate for the left primary revealed that she had been pregnant once before, after being elected as national secretary of the Greens in 2022 but suffered a miscarriage after a few weeks. “I didn’t expect it at all, and it was a very violent moment, of which I almost told no one, not even my family, so as not to make people sad,” she stated.
A few months later, she and her partner began a medically assisted procreation journey. “Like many, we had a series of failures in fertility treatments, and then we were advised to do IVF. I started the treatment the week following the dissolution of 2024 and got pregnant again. But I was shocked to learn at the first ultrasound that the pregnancy would not continue. I went through very difficult weeks,” she shared. “With my partner, after many failures, we eventually put the project on hold. And then, a few months later, I got pregnant again […] A ‘miracle baby,’ as they say,” she confided.
When asked about improvements needed in fertility treatments, Marine Tondelier advocated for the possibility of analyzing embryos before implantation, in a well-defined framework, as is done in many other European countries. A practice currently banned in France. “This would help avoid a form of perseverance in implanting non-viable embryos,” she mentioned, pointing out that a significant portion of infertility cases are due to embryo anomalies, often chromosomal.
INTERNAL TURMOIL AMONG THE ECOLOGISTS
The political leader is facing internal criticism within her party, where a minority faction is calling for a Federal Council meeting to assess the “heavy defeat” in the local elections. The faction named “Making Ecology Win,” led by deputy Jérémie Iordanoff, regrets the lack of analysis after the disastrous results of the 2024 European elections and the municipal election defeat. They also criticize the rushed designation process for an ecological candidacy in the left primary, noting a lack of priority. Marine Tondelier won the internal ecologists’ primary in December, with 86% of the votes, to represent her party in the left primary for the 2027 presidential election.
The faction demands an “urgent need” to assess the true outcomes of these elections and, more broadly, the political conduct of the ecologists over the past two years and to make strategic decisions before the presidential and legislative elections of 2017, calling for an “extraordinary Federal Council meeting” as soon as possible.
