The reform of the old National School of Administration (ENA) continues: the executive wants to remove “the boot”, which allowed according to its exit classification to join the large bodies of the public service.
by Benoît Floc’h
One of the last pillars of the high public service is about to fall. According to a draft decree revealed by Challenges , and that Le Monde has obtained, the government wishes to delete the exit classification from the old School National Administration (ENA), which has become the National Institute of Public Service (INSP) on 1 er January 2022.
This is a strong symbol. The ENA exit classification has for decades forged the elite of the administration, a state nobility accused of cultivating the inter-self and the pantouflage. Indeed, the students classified in “La Botte”, the first fifteen exit places of the Strasbourg School, joined Ipso Facto the large bodies of the Public Service: Court of Auditors, Council of State, General Inspectorate of Finance . The status assigned to them assured them a marked career within the most prestigious institutions of the State. For Emmanuel Macron, having however taken this royal way himself, it was “an annuity” no longer having to be.
As early as 2024, a new procedure will be instituted at the exit of the INSP. “In order to strengthen the professionalization of recruitments leaving the Institute, indicates the presentation report of the draft decree, the exit classification is deleted for the benefit of an assignment procedure aimed at ensuring a profile/position appearance.”
Progressive selection
rather than a place in a ranking, it will now be the balance between the wishes of the students and the needs of the administrations which will determine the place that each will occupy when leaving the Insp. Of course, the main risk often raised by opponents of the abolition of the exit classification is that of a possible cooptation allowing to favor this or that. It was precisely to avoid these drifts which had courses before the Second World War that the classification had been devoted. To deal with such a risk, the government plans to create a commission responsible for “ensuring compliance with the principle of impartiality and equal treatment of students”.
This will be based on a succession of “Tours”. From the “anonymous files” of the pupils and those developed by employers, then successive interviews, a progressive selection will take place.
The President of the Republic thus completes most of the reform of the training of senior officials. Launched at the press conference which had followed the social movement of “yellow vests” in April 2019, it was intended to form a high public service more representative of the company and whose career would no longer be based on a rank obtained At the end of schooling, at 25, and a status of belonging to “a body”, but on the merits and the wishes of each.
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