At the beginning of the 2000s, Jean-Pierre Jouyet was director of the Treasury. He receives one of those usual directives encouraging him to decentralize the central administration and strengthen its presence at the local level. The rest is he who tells it: “The Treasury department has around 600 people, most of whom are at senior executive or manager level. And we would like to send a hundred of them to Châteauroux or Vesoul? a joke ! […] A senior official from Bercy is ready to pack his bags for abroad. Expatriation is prestigious, the resulting bonuses are attractive, secondment to international institutions allows you to legally avoid taxes, returning to Paris allows you to advance. So I sent a young enarque to the IMF in Washington.” This “young enarque” is called Alexis Kohler and he will experience a destiny which would not have been the same if he had joined “a treasury in Chartres”.
On May 14, 2017, Alexis Kohler became secretary general of the Elysée, a position he still holds six years later. He succeeded a certain Jean-Pierre Jouyet. Will he one day suffer from the same syndrome? Will he feel the same remorse, will he be overcome by the same vertigo? Jean-Pierre Jouyet was, before being appointed minister or ambassador, a dedicated, sincere senior civil servant, “convinced that we were all doing our best, individually and collectively”. The criticisms of our dear elites seemed misplaced to him, populist perhaps, unreasonable no doubt. Then he learned to look at the State as a simple citizen and he saw it very differently. This introspection, which turns into self-criticism, gives rise to an edifying book: Is this really necessary, Minister? (Albin Michel).
“I sinned”: because he mastered everything about the administrative machine, Jean-Pierre Jouyet did not understand to what extent it had to be simplified. He admits, he was more interested in the relations between central administrations, his core business at one time, than in the relations between administrations and citizens. He admits, like so many others, he has his share of responsibility for the endless increase in public spending because ministers, advisors and senior civil servants above all do not want to see their budgets reduced and – synonymous in France – their power.
Thermal regulations for school buildings: 1800 pages!
He describes this infernal spiral of a State gone mad. All the presidents agree that there are too many laws, none manages to reduce their number (400 during Hollande’s five-year term); too many standards too. And now in ten years the Environmental Code has gone from 100,000 to a million words. The thermal regulations for school buildings are spread over 1800 pages, who has read it? Proliferation, all standards combined, increased by 15% during Macron’s first five-year term, according to calculations by a senior official.
All presidents also say that fewer ministers and fewer advisors are needed. “The government of Elisabeth Borne has established a new record in a competition where the level is nevertheless the highest: at a cost of 174 million euros, it turns out to be the most expensive in the history of the Fifth Republic , writes Jouyet. It has 565 advisors, or more than 13 per ministry or state secretariat, while in 2017, President Macron did not want more than 5 advisors per member of the government. In spring 2023, he occupied 2,822 people, including more than 2,200 ushers, secretaries, drivers, cooks, security officers…”
All presidents want to modernize the French administration. After his election, Emmanuel Macron launched a 2022 public action committee, the ambitious design gave birth to a mouse, or, if you have a bad mind, a snail – with an increase in the State payroll of 3 .61 billion euros. “Reform, in the eyes of the overwhelming majority of political leaders, is not in-depth work, but a way of communicating according to current events,” denounces the former secretary general of the Elysée. Health and school have abundant financial resources, without satisfying a majority of our fellow citizens. The feudalism of administrations, the territorial mille-feuille, the complexity of a newcomer, ecological planning, etc. : there would be enough to sink into depression. Jean-Pierre Jouyet nevertheless recounts one of the most extraordinary nights he has experienced, which will lead to the creation of the euro, in due time. No, we should not despair of the State.