The text fell in the middle of the Easter weekend, but did not fail to react. Published in the Official Journal on Sunday April 17, a decree sets the terms for the extinction, from January 1, 2023, of the corps of diplomats. After the prefectural and the general state inspectorates, the latter will join the new interministerial body of state administrators. An effect of the reform of the senior civil service, adopted by ordinance on June 2, 2021. Like the others, future senior civil servants wishing to work in embassies will have to go through years of various missions before joining the Quai d’Orsay.
By way of training, they will be offered a core curriculum common to fourteen civil service schools. On leaving the National Institute of Public Service (INSP), it will now be necessary to carry out six years of field missions. Everyone can then, according to their ambitions and results, become a finance inspector, prefect, or… ambassador. A mobility of careers which worries within the great bodies, in particular within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “France cannot be the only great country without a diplomatic corps,” former ambassador Michel Duclos said on Twitter. Same concern for the former French ambassador to the United States Gérard Araud. “France will therefore be the only major Western country without professional diplomats, he criticized in particular on Twitter. A history of several centuries ends thus, the door is now open to American-style appointments.”
The trade unions of the Quai d’Orsay are not to be outdone: among them, the CFTC-FAE-MAE, Solidaires Affaires internationales, the Union Syndicale des agents des corps de chancellerie (USACC) and the Syndicate Association of Ministry Agents of Foreign Affairs (Asam-Unsa) intend to lodge an appeal before the Council of State in the coming days. Alexis Grand, vice-president of the CFTC-FAE-MAE, speaks for L’Express on the subject.
L’Express: Why are you worried about this reform?
Alexis Grand: We love our jobs, our home. This reform denies its specificities, its particularities. Our missions are very different from those of an administrator: he regulates; we don’t, or very little. This reform will destroy the specificities of the diplomatic network which allowed us to weigh in the world well beyond our real weight: our expertise in international affairs. By bypassing the statute of the public service to be able to appoint without control of competence, for the benefit of connivance, we attack the republican principle of meritocracy. We replace the expert, the craftsman by the courtier. In a disordered country, the country is deprived of a compass. Is it really time to deprive the country of professional diplomats?
In West France, an elected CFTC-FAE-MAE speaks of a decree published in “emergency”. Why ?
One wonders what urgency there was to adopt such an important decree, modifying the diplomatic status, on an Easter Sunday between the two rounds of the presidential election.
Four trade unions, including the CFTC-FAE-MAE, want to file an appeal before the Council of State in the coming days against the decree activating the extinction of the corps of diplomats. Why now ? When will this appeal be filed?
For that, the text had to be published. We will start this debate next week with the reconfirmed or appointed minister. The inter-union formed by the CFTC, the ASAM-UNSA, the USASCC and Solidaires is determined to defend the future of the agents, our ministry and our influence in the world. Including through litigation: this reform does not meet the needs of our missions in our opinion.
In a grandstand at Sunday newspaper, you indicate that France could no longer “preside over a new global climate agreement like the Paris Agreement of 2016” with this reform. Why ?
It’s like replacing a medical specialist with a generalist, without checking his knowledge, just because he knows the director of the hospital. Concretely, in the future, it is unlikely that our diplomacy will be able to make the difference as it did, with Dominique de Villepin in the face of the war in Iraq or with Laurent Fabius to obtain the Iranian nuclear agreement. Our rivals are already rubbing their hands.
In a grandstand to World, a group of diplomats was also alarmed, in November 2021, by a reform which would risk weakening “our ability to come to the aid of our fellow citizens”. Why ?
One does not improvise consul. Consuls have functions vis-à-vis French nationals abroad that are partially similar to those of mayors and prefects. It is not mobility on a post but experience that makes a good consul. It is the result of a journey.
You also point to the risk of appointment “by the fact of the prince”. How possible would that be?
Yes, this is probably the real hidden reason for this reform. We have long been one of the most welcoming ministries, thanks to mobility and external appointments. This was the case even recently, directly to the functions of number 2 then of ambassador, objectively inaccessible so quickly by the competition or the exit of the ENA. But he was a specialist in the region in question. What matters is competence. The risk – proven – is the star, the rewarded personality, unrelated to the position and the skills required. In this case, one no longer serves the State, one serves oneself.
With this reform, the executive has the ambition to standardize the paths of the administration, not to confine civil servants to predefined paths, as may be the case today with large bodies. What do you think ?
It is a false good idea of enarque, little adapted to our sovereign trades. One would not think of “homogenizing” the judges, the soldiers and the police. Why diplomats and prefects? And it is a false modernity. No company reverses its main functions in this way, entrusts its accounting to its salesperson or its marketing to its IT specialist. Because the result would be catastrophic. But apparently, this criterion of result and competence is not taken into account.
Would this deletion therefore harm the professionalism of diplomacy?
Absolutely. The idea of power is that a non-diplomat, enarque in mobility from another ministry or consultant for example, will do better than a career diplomat, because it is not a real job. We see in it a negation and a downgrading. No country of the P5, G7, G20 or European Union has thus deprived itself of career diplomats. They reinforce them, on the contrary. This is not a coincidence, but the consequence drawn from the current world situation.
Do you fear a loss of attractiveness of the Quai d’Orsay in terms of career?
It is obvious, we will no longer attract the same profiles, unique in the State by their diversity and their careers often outside the classic French elite format. The Quai d’Orsay will be increasingly homogenized, with similar profiles having attended the same Grandes Ecoles, thereby losing its richness, its diversity of profiles and backgrounds, in particular its culture of promotion based on merit.
In the petition signed by your collective, it is explained that this reform would lead to the “formatting” at the INSP of generalist civil servants. But wouldn’t this text, by allowing the diversity of paths, promote the opposite?
No. The reform will move away from the stated objectives, the justifications put forward all demonstrate a lack of knowledge of the diplomatic tool: the Quai d’Orsay already welcomes many mobility and diplomats are already realizing it. In concrete terms, 80% to 90% of posts in embassies are already actually held by contract agents or experts from other ministries. We are just going to open the remaining 10% to 20% of posts which constitute the diplomatic and consular heart, on which our embassies and our influence hold.
This petition also evokes an “ambitious reform of our diplomacy” carried by Jean-Yves Le Drian. What did it consist of?
Following extensive internal and external consultation (think-tanks, companies, NGOs, etc.) and without having had recourse to a consulting firm, Jean-Yves Le Drian had announced an ambitious reform modernizing and opening up our diplomacy. The announcement in particular of the creation of a unified diplomatic corps with a wider variety of entry routes was torpedoed by this so-called reform “of the senior management of the senior civil service” by Amélie de Montchalin, which was concerted only between itself and the Elysée. Two rooms, two atmospheres.