March 2024, a table near the National Assembly. Laure Lavalette, National Rally deputy for Var, is surrounded by a group of journalists and makes her assumptions. “It’s certain that if we come to power, some senior officials will be on antidepressants,” she laughs. Only three months ago, no one could imagine that the possibility of the far-right party assuming responsibility was so close. She herself does not have only good experiences with senior officials, in particular with Philippe Mahé, the prefect of Var, who refuses to appear alongside the frontist MP.
On December 7, 2023, he did not invite her to the inauguration of a France services house in his constituency, as during a trip to Porquerolles in the company of Minister Hervé Berville, where Laure Lavalette had gone above and beyond. hands to try to embed themselves. If some prefects have become accustomed to the presence of the RN in the Assembly, relations are not yet fluid throughout the territory. At least, they were not until the evening of June 9, when Emmanuel Macron chose to dissolve the Assembly.
Until then, the RN’s coming to power was only a hypothesis, which was mentioned in conversations. Now the prospect of Jordan Bardella moving to Matignon has become a real possibility. Since then, some phones have not stopped ringing. “Many senior officials have been calling me since Sunday for advice,” explains Nathalie Loiseau, Horizons MEP and former director of the National School of Administration (ENA), from 2012 to 2017. They are wondering, because the RN is not obviously by a party like the others.”
At the top of the state, people are agitated, they consult their elders at every turn. “A regional prefect called me again just now, confirms an experienced civil servant. In the past, he was in the office of a socialist minister, and has no illusions about his future in this hypothesis. Serving a government of this nature does not excite him.”
The moods are high among the prefects, by far the civil servants most exposed to this possible change of government. Placed under the authority of Beauvau, they are the ones who, if the National Rally comes to power, will have to directly apply its decisions in security matters. Another prefect, from the department this time, added: “A certain number of us will return the cap, that’s for sure. It’s unimaginable that I would salute Jordan Bardella in uniform!” A former prefect, now exercising other responsibilities within the State, strongly approves. “I am in this situation too, and I have never made a secret of it. The senior officials around me ask themselves the question – no one wants to serve an executive at the hands of the National Rally, he explains . But people are obviously wondering what they can do next. Many have children and a loan to repay.
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Inertia force
Many people choose to turn to other administrations, more independent and therefore less exposed. “Some tell me that they are going to go to the Court of Auditors or the Council of State to protect themselves, and have already submitted applications,” indicates a young senior civil servant, this time at the general management of the Treasury. Marked on the left, he considers it “impossible” to apply the budgetary decisions of a government labeled RN. But this is not the case for everyone. “My comrades are generally hostile to their arrival, but we must not forget that at the Treasury, generally, everyone is quite economically liberal,” he continues. “They say to themselves, that despite the announcements of the RN, their arrival in power will be business as usual.“And if it’s not?” They reassure themselves by convincing themselves that they are doing statistics and that their activity is not political. Why would they care?”
For many observers, rather than a revolt, this state of mind would prevail among the majority of senior civil servants if the National Rally came to power. “When François Mitterrand won in 1981, socialist power was perceived as almost Bolshevik. Do you know how many people left the prefecture? Only one, a sub-prefect. His name was Philippe de Villiers, points out Jean-Jacques Urvoas, guard des Sceaux under François Hollande. The hierarchy will think about its future and wait for the period to pass. The RN therefore does not have to fear mass resignations at the top of the State. Among those most hostile to the far-right party, we prefer to imagine ourselves as a barrier to any deviation from the rule of law. “I will be there to run the house,” confides a state councilor. Others see themselves as “resistance from within”. “You know, when the Administration can slow down a project, it knows how to do it very well, adds a magistrate from the Court of Auditors. There is almost no law that passes today without an implementing decree, and There’s nothing easier than dragging your feet at that point.” Senior officials transformed into Che Guevara by their force of inertia. “I call it disloyalty,” reprimands the prefect who plans to give up his cap. “This strategy will only reinforce public resentment. And that’s without counting on senior officials in agreement with the ideas of the RN.”
“Why not try ?”
Recently, we have felt a change in atmosphere in the corridors of formed bodies. Like this day when, in a meeting of the Court of Auditors, a participant defended the idea of recruiting people of modest but French origin instead of immigrants. Or this outraged senior official who heard a racist remark slip out in a corridor. “I’ve never seen that in forty years,” he says offended to L’Express. “The air is dark. We feel that there is no longer any demonization, the question “It’s not ‘fascism is upon us’, it’s how we live with it.”
Enough to put into perspective the change that Bardella’s arrival at Matignon would bring about. “I think that few people are sensitive to the past of the National Rally today, in the same way that few connect the Communist Party to the Stalinists. It is an inevitable transformation”, estimates Daniel Keller, ex-president of the Association former students of ENA. After declaring on the Opinion Internationale website on June 11 that “if the people want the RN in power, the French elites will have to help them”, the senior official changed course, then calling for a barrier to the RN. This is not the case for everyone. A muted resentment, linked in particular to the reform of the senior civil service launched by Emmanuel Macron, pushes some, at the Quai d’Orsay, to say they want to vote for the extreme right. “I am one of the people who have gone back like clocks and who say to themselves: I had a very bad experience with this reform, I am going to vote for Marine Le Pen,” confides a diplomat. The text which entered into force in 2021 notably marked the end of the diplomatic corps. “I’m not the only one who thinks like that,” he assures. “After all, if the RN comes to power through democratic means, why not try?”
No worries on the RN side
On the side of the far-right party, we swear: “We will have no trouble finding senior civil servants willing to put themselves at our service.” Since the 1980s, some prefects, sub-prefects and enarques, from Yvan Blot to Jean-Yves Le Gallou, including Christophe Bay (campaign director of Marine Le Pen during the 2022 presidential election), have always gravitated around the Lepenist party. The boss’s entourage constantly cites the Horaces, this obscure circle of advisors, some from the senior civil service, who advise Marine Le Pen.
For the upcoming legislative elections, moreover, we find among the candidates nominated by the RN a former member of the central administration of Bercy, or members of the military. “There is already an enormous degree of support among some,” complains a member of the Court of Auditors. “The military are simply delighted, the cops are happy, and the prefects, for many, are not angry.” On the frontist side, there are plenty. Thomas Ménage, deputy for Loiret, assures that, on his territory, he has received several invitations to dinner from senior civil servants who are members of the Court of Auditors. The thirty-year-old MP sees this as a generational shift, also linked to the sociological evolution of the party. “We won’t have the old ones, but the new ones, the administrators of the Assembly, the administrative judges, we know them, we studied with them, we cross paths. The RN is now more popular and more heterogeneous , it makes relationships with this kind of profile easier.” No worries, then. And some are even waiting for an accession to power to resolve their problems of understanding with the prefects of their territory, who should be replaced by less hostile volunteers.
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