Diplomats will henceforth be chosen from among senior civil servants from all administrations or from the private sector. This is one of the aspects of the reform of the senior civil service.
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The abolition of the diplomatic corps, recorded in a decree published on Sunday April 17 in the Official Journal, aroused the anger of diplomats and a large part of the political class on Monday. After the replacement of the ENA by the National Institute of Public Service on January 1, another aspect of the reform of the senior civil service will gradually come into force from July 1.
“Emmanuel Macron wants to replace impartial state servants with cronyism”, accuses her rival in the second round of the presidential election, the candidate RN Marine Le Pen. Jean-Luc Mélenchon is worried about the “destruction” of one “diplomatic network” old “several centuries”. “How is a decision of this nature possible without a vote in parliament, between the two rounds of an election?”, asks Ségolène Royal for her part.
In concrete terms, the measure announced at the end of last year means that high-ranking diplomats will no longer come exclusively from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as is the case today, but that they will henceforth be chosen from among senior civil servants from all administrations or from the private sector. From 2023, diplomats will thus rub shoulders with prefects, general inspectors of finance and all the executives so far trained by the ENA within a new “corps of state administrators”.
The former French ambassador to the United States Gérard Araud regrets that France becomes thus according to him “the only major Western country without professional diplomats”. A reform that is “a mistake” for former Foreign Minister Michel Barnier (LR).
According to information from franceinfo, this reform is experienced, at the Quai d’Orsay, as a downgrading of French diplomas. Diplomats see it as a punishment after Emmanuel Macron notably criticized them in 2019 for slowing down his policy of rapprochement with Russia. Some also consider that the moment is badly chosen in the midst of the war in Ukraine and that it could weaken France’s external action. These diplomats fear the loss of expertise in the field and a possible drift towards the politicization of appointments as can be done in the United States.