Worried about their future, the staff of the Quai d’Orsay are called to strike this Thursday for the second time in the history of the ministry. Gatherings are planned across France, and in particular in Paris.
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It is an extremely rare movement where only trade unionists speak on their behalf, where the platforms are anonymous and where figures from the Quai express themselves, but only on Twitter. The 13,500 agents of the Quai d’Orsay, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, are called to strike this Thursday, June 2.
>> Reform of the diplomatic corps: “It’s absurd and contributes to the weakening of French diplomacy”, according to a former ambassador
To speak publicly to the media, you have to be a former diplomat like Nathalie Loiseau, also a former minister and Macronist MEP. “Just as you wouldn’t ask your plumber to fix your roof, a diplomat wouldn’t necessarily make a terrific assistant director at the Department of Agriculture. And vice versa. Diplomacy is a profession that must be strengthened and not weakened“, she pleads.
At the origin of this movement, the second in the history of the ministry, the abolition of the diplomatic corps, decided within the framework of the reform of the senior civil service wanted by Emmanuel Macron. With this reform, a diplomat is no longer guaranteed to spend his entire career at the Quai d’Orsay: many see it as the end of professional diplomacy. Which, added to a continuous reduction in resources for 30 years, is boiling the eminently discreet world of French diplomacy.
“We are not interchangeable“, proclaim the diplomats, who point to the destructuring of careers, the crisis of vocations and the decline of the influence of France, the third international network after the United States and China. A “nonsense“, while the war is back in Europe. The bond of trust is broken, says diplomat and permanent CFTC Olivier Da Silva. “Until now, power was accustomed to being obeyed without barguign. There is a kind of moral contract in a way: we are an extension of the executive power and the reform comes to impact this relationship of trust“, he denounces.
The strikers are calling for an evaluation of the successive reforms, and of the foundations of diplomacy. This is already a big file on the desk of Catherine Colonna, a career diplomat who has just arrived at the head of the ministry.