Greens pushed aside over Leonarda affair

France's main green party appears to facing a drop-off in support, with the so-called Leonarda affair the major factor. The results of an opinion poll carried out by BVA show that 56 percent of the over 1,050 people surveyed now say that the environmentalists should leave the government altogether - an 11 percent rise on September.

France's Housing Minister Cécile Duflot and François Hollande at the Elysée Palace, 4 July, 2012 Reuters/Philippe Wojazer

The party Europe Ecology - Greens, by its full name, has two members in government - Cécile Duflot, Minister of Territorial Equality and Housing, and Pascal Canfin, Deputy Minister for Development under the Minister of Foreign Affairs. On Tuesday they issued a statement calling for the return of the Roma schoolgirl Leonarda Dibrani and her family to France "in accordance with the legitimate right to family life" after they were deported to Kosovo earlier this month.

Anger over Leonarda's expulsion, and that of another foreign student to Armenia, has seen schools in Paris and other French cities disrupted by pupil protests. The green ministers were seen as lending their support to the movement, which 90 percent of survey participants view as wrong. Less than half of those polled think it's permissible for the party members to remain in the government at a time of such internal parliamentary disputes.

Divisions have appeared even amongst the ruling Socialists over the affair. Whilst French Interior Minister Manuel Valls has defended the authorities' tough line, the wife of President Francois Hollande, Valerie Trierweiler, has questioned the girl's treatment.

Green MP Isabelle Attard has dismissed the poll as "a joke" and says the question of whether the party shold remain in the government will be addressed at their national and regional congress in three weeks time.