Pascal Durand

Pascal Durand
Pascal Durand
	Pascal Durand in 2012
Member of the European Parliament
	In office; 1 July 2014 – 15 July 2024
Constituency	France
National Secretary of Europe Ecology – The Greens
	In office; 23 June 2012 – 30 November 2013
Preceded by	Cécile Duflot
Succeeded by	Emmanuelle Cosse
Personal details
Born	3 October 1960 (age 64); Montreuil, France
Political party	Europe Ecology – The Greens (2010–2016); La République En Marche! (2019–2022)

Pascal Durand (born 3 October 1960) is a French lawyer^[1] and politician of La République En Marche ! (LREM) who has been serving as a Member of the European Parliament from 2014 to 2024.

Political career

Career in national politics

Durand was elected spokesperson for Europe Ecology – The Greens (EELV) at the party's 2011 congress in La Rochelle. He later served as national secretary of EELV from 23 June 2012 to 30 November 2013, succeeding Cécile Duflot.

In the EELV primaries ahead of the 2012 presidential elections, Durand served as director of candidate Nicolas Hulot's campaign. When Hulot eventually lost against Eva Joly, Durand joined Joly's campaign team.^[2]

Member of the European Parliament

Since 2014, Durand has been a Member of the European Parliament. In May 2019, he was reelected, this time as member of the Renew Europe group.

In parliament, Durand has been serving on the Committee on Constitutional Affairs since 2014. On the Committee, he serves as coordinator for the Renew Europe group where he works to reform EU institutions and to launch the works of the Conference on the Future of Europe. Since 2021, he has been part of the Parliament's delegation to the Conference.^[3]

Durand is also a substitute member of the Committee on Legal Affairs (JURI) and the Committee on Budgetary Control (CONT). In the past, he was a member of the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection (2014-2019) and the Committee of Inquiry into Money Laundering, Tax Avoidance and Tax Evasion (2016-2017) that investigated the Panama Papers revelations and tax avoidance schemes more broadly. Notably, he authored an own-initiative report on the extension of product lifetime (2017)^[4]^[5] and served as lead rapporteur on the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (2022).^[6]

In February 2016, Durand left EELV to join Nicolas Hulot's campaign for the 2017 presidential elections.^[7]

In 2019, Durand was the only French delegate to vote against the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market.^[8]`

In addition to his committee assignments, Durand is part of the European Parliament Intergroup on Fighting against Poverty,^[9] the European Parliament Intergroup on the Welfare and Conservation of Animals,^[10] the Responsible Business Conduct Working Group,^[11] the MEPs Against Cancer group^[12] and the Spinelli Group.^[13]

Pascal Durand led the negotiation on the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive as rapporteur for the European Parliament.^[14]

Political positions

In the preparations for a Conference on the Future of Europe in 2020, Durand proposed Joschka Fischer and Emma Bonino as potential chairs for the conference.^[15]

In May 2021, Durand joined a group of 39 mostly Green Party lawmakers from the European Parliament who in a letter urged the leaders of Germany, France and Italy not to support Arctic LNG 2, a $21 billion Russian Arctic liquefied natural gas (LNG) project, due to climate change concerns.^[16]