Former Green MEP and May 1968 icon Daniel Cohn-Bendit has cancelled a planned book presentation in Montpellier after a petition signed by over 7,200 people protested his appearance, citing his past statements on child sexuality.
The event, scheduled for June 30 at the municipal Salle Pétrarque, was intended to promote his new book Souvenirs d’un apatride.
Local resident Bérengère Dubus launched the Change.org petition, describing the invitation as “an insult to all victims and a blank cheque for paedophilia.”
“Invite Cohn-Bendit to talk about Europe? And why not Epstein to talk about finances?”, she stated in the petition description.
The petition gained rapid support across political lines and forced the cancellation.
Dubus is founder and leader of the Union des Intermédiaires de Crédit (UIC), the first national union for mortgage and finance brokers in France.
She also has been visible on issues like family, child protection, local governance, and economic freedom, but is not a household name in France.
Cohn-Bendit, a co-founder of the German Greens and long-serving French Green MEP, has faced repeated scrutiny over comments made in the 1970s.
In his 1975 book Le Grand Bazar, he described erotic encounters with children while working at an alternative kindergarten in Frankfurt.
In a 1982 appearance on the Apostrophes television programme, he stated: “The sexuality of a kid is absolutely fantastic, you have to be honest. When a little girl of five starts undressing you, it’s fantastic, it’s an erotic-maniac game.”
He has repeatedly described these passages as provocative fantasy and a product of the era’s anti-authoritarian climate, insisting he never committed any sexual abuse.
Former kindergarten parents and children later defended him publicly.
Nevertheless, the remarks have resurfaced periodically and remain a source of deep controversy.
Cohn-Bendit’s history with the issue extends to the broader 1970s–1980s debates within parts of the German Green movement, which at times included calls to decriminalise certain forms of adult-child sexual contact; a chapter the party later formally regretted.
Daniel Cohn-Bendit has been a prominent and committed euro-federalist.
In 2012, he co-authored the book “For Europe” with Guy Verhofstadt, calling for a full post-national federal Europe, with much stronger EU institutions, a European government, and reduced national veto powers.
