The French Association of Profession Diplomats welcomed the launch, on October 28, of the Estates General of Diplomacy by M Me Catherine Colonna, the Minister of Europe and Foreign Affairs, and the appointment, as general rapporteur, of the ambassador Jérôme Bonnafont, whose November 2020 report entitled “The diplomatic corps, body of the future for the State and France in the world” contains a number of crucial recommendations for the future of diplomacy.
These general states are a unique opportunity to draw up a lucid diagnosis on the internal and external challenges that French diplomacy today faces and to provide suitable solutions. The crisis in which diplomacy faces, linked to both the growing missions requested to it, the reduction of its means and the questioning of its sovereign and public service mission, threatens its sustainability and the ability of our country to play its role in the world.
We salute the commitment of the organizing team of the Estates General, who is carrying out sustained work and offers agents an unprecedented opportunity to express their concerns and their vision of the future. While these exchanges enter their second month, it seems useful to us, in parallel with the dialogue that we have with the Minister and the Administration, to publicly emphasize on three elements essential to the success of the Estates General.
Fait
The first focuses on the current reform of the public service and the texts adopted in recent months without consultation with the Parliament – recently recently on November 23 – which place the diplomats before the fait accompli. They sow confusion, deeply harm the confidence in the Estates General and undermine their operational translation. Their implementation must be postponed.
We have positively welcomed the President of the Republic’s appeal to enrich the reform and the declaration in which the Minister called for a taboo reflection on the future of the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs. The Estates General will only be able to keep their promises if our authorities are ready to take over, including on the regulatory level, the conclusions that will emerge, without dismissing the rewriting of texts adopted in the precipitation, in order to be able to The unique lighting that this exercise will provide on the needs and the future of our diplomatic tool.
The second is the need to continue to honor the promise made to associate largely and closely with this exercise of external personalities, in particular parliamentarians, researchers, representatives of civil society and the media. The course of the Estates General deserves to be the subject of a large advertisement, faithful to the debates, in order to make our fellow citizens known the concrete consequences of the developments of diplomacy for their present and their future. Our diplomatic tool deserves better than a priori unfounded or articles published recently to denigrate the competence and the mobilization of agents which devote all their energy and their intelligence to defend the interests of France in Europe and in the world.
You have 49.05% of this article to read. The continuation is reserved for subscribers.