Éric Piolle


Éric Piolle is a French engineer and politician.
He was Regional Councillor of Rhône-Alpes from March 2010 to April 2014. He has served as mayor of Grenoble since 2014.

Education and business career

Piolle was born in Pau, France. He attended a local high school in that area. After graduating, he went to the Grenoble Institute of Technology to study engineering.
He joined the Hewlett-Packard Company in 2001, and became a senior manager at the Grenoble site. In February 2011, he was fired for refusing to set up a relocation plan.
He co-founded the company Raise Partners, a company specializing in financial risk management.

Political career

Before mayor of Grenoble

In 1997, at 24, Piolle was a parliamentary candidate for the eighth district of Isère as a Miscellaneous left, he won 1.35% of the votes. In 2002 he was a substitute candidate during the legislative elections for the first district of Isère.
In March 2010, he was elected as a regional councilor of Isère, which is a department in the Rhône-Alpes region, as a member of Europe Ecology.
In June 2012, he was a parliamentary candidate for the first district of Isère as a member of EELV, he won 7.7% of votes.

Mayor of Grenoble

In 2014, Piolle became a candidate for mayor of Grenoble during the municipal elections, his motto being "Grenoble, Une Ville pour Tous". He was the leading candidate throughout the race, gathering support from environmentalists, EELV, the Left Party, :fr:Les Alternatifs|The Alternatives, the Anticapitalist Left, and two local associations, ADES and the Citizen Network. He was elected during a city council session on April 4, 2014, succeeding Michel Destot as mayor of Grenoble. He received 50 votes out of the 59 councilors. After this election Grenoble becomes the first french city with more than 100 000 inhabitants to elect an EELV municipal government.
After winning the election, he declined to run for president of Grenoble-Alpes Métropole, and resigned from his position as a regional councilor of Rhône-Alpes.
In the French presidential election of 2017, he called on voters to support Jean-Luc Mélenchon.