A call for a strike was launched by a collective of 600 diplomats and the inter-union of Foreign Affairs to protest against the abolition of the diplomatic corps planned by the reform of the High Civil Service. The text plans to create a common pot of State administrators that can be mobilized from one ministry to another.
The rally in front of the Quai d’Orsay, where the French Foreign Ministry sits, was brief on Thursday morning. No more than an hour, in compliance with the rules dictated by the police headquarters, reminds Oriane Verdier, from the RFI International service. Around a hundred people have therefore decided to gather on the Esplanade des Invalides to give body and voice to today’s strike.
By definition, members of the diplomatic corps are spread across embassies and consulates around the world. The strike therefore actually began on the Asian continent, very early this morning. It will end this evening on the American continent.
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The objective of this morning’s rally at the Invalides was not to represent the mass mobilization of diplomats, which all the same promises to be unprecedented, according to the organizers, but to express the dismay shared by all generations and all levels of the hierarchy.
The diplomats are also keen to break this image of a privileged class, which would reject the reform to preserve a certain form of self-segregation. According to them, French diplomacy is, on the contrary, driven by men and women open to the world, but also by other trades, from the army to culture, via the private companies with which they collaborate. daily.
Protesters describe breathless shadowworkers after 30 years of progressive budget reduction. Small hands that make France live abroad on the strength of their convictions.
► The “fed up” of French diplomats is also on the front page of the French press review of the day