An unprecedented bronca for more than 30 years. Deploring a “chaotic” training, the students of the last promotion of the ex-ENA participated “massively” Thursday in a 24-hour strike movement. According to the strikers, 85% of the students of the promotion did not go to class.
In a column published online the day before by Le Monde, the promotion Germaine Tillion (2021-2022) of the former National School of Administration (ENA) strongly protested against its “training conditions”. Created in 1945 by General de Gaulle, the ENA, sacrificed on the altar of the Yellow Vests crisis as part of a vast reform of the senior civil service wanted by Emmanuel Macron, gave way on January 1 to the National Institute of Public Service (INSP).
But the creation of this institute has “so far resulted in a chaotic course” marked by “brutal changes in the content of the lessons” and “permanent improvisation”, lamented the promotion Germaine Tillion, baptized with the name of this great figure of the Resistance.
“Destabilized” civil servants, from the ENA to the Quai d’Orsay
How far will the strike movement go? According to the strikers, the management of the INSP “has expressed its wish to start negotiations”, an outstretched hand accepted by the students who intend “to give a chance to the discussions now under way”. A new general assembly of their promotion was to meet Thursday evening, outside the walls of the ENA, to decide on “follow-up to be given to the movement on the basis of the progress of the negotiations”, they specified.
In their column in Le Monde, the students warn: “It is today the very attractiveness of the public service that is in danger”. Their anger follows in the wake of that of the diplomats who stopped work on June 2 to also protest against a series of reforms affecting the Quai d’Orsay, a first there too for decades.
“The extinction of the prefectural corps and the diplomatic corps” and “the abolition of our school” were “orchestrated without sufficient visibility” and “deeply destabilized the officials concerned”, lamented the promotion Germaine Tillion in her tribune at Le Monde.
Asked by AFP, the Ministry of Transformation and the Public Service who met them on Tuesday observed that “like any reform, this reform raises questions” but speaks of a “big listening work”. Assuring to be in “a posture of dialogue”, the ministry intends however to recall “the meaning of the reform” of the senior civil service, namely “more operationality” and “more proximity” with the field. As for the management of the INSP, it did not wish to speak.