Emmanuel Macron abolishes the École nationale d'administration (ENA), or rather reforms it completely. The French president had announced it two years ago, in the midst of the yellow vests crisis: the training school for the French public function, established in 1945 and which it has "baked out" half of the presidents of the Republic from 1958 to today (four out of eight, including Macron himself and before him Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, Jacques Chirac, François Hollande), has no more reason to exist as it is now conceived. Therefore, ENA will no longer exist and will be replaced by another school which could, in the intentions of the Head of State, modernize public higher education, extending it to a wider and more heterogeneous audience, and no longer coming almost exclusively from the Greater Ecole di Sciences Po, the elite institute of political studies in Paris, whose School of International Affairs was until recently directed by the new secretary of the Democratic Party Enrico Letta.
The announcement was made by Emmanuel Macron today, Thursday 8 April, even if the reform will enter into force at the beginning of the summer after a passage in the council of ministers. Frédéric Thiriez, a lawyer at the Council of State and at the Court of Cassation and also former president of the French football league, is dealing with the case. “ENA will be replaced with something that works better. We need excellent services and no longer just jobs guaranteed for life”, Macron said recently, referring to the frequent accusation, formulated over time by critics against ENA, of representing a real caste, within which the highest offices of the state. The president himself, who also studied there at ENA, defined the school as a "moule à pensée unique", that is, a unique thought stencil. The new institute will instead be "more international and open to the university and research world".
In short, the school of the French elites is changing its name and face after more than 70 years and, at least in its intentions, adapts to the times: "The new elites - Macron hopes - must acquire a culture of transforming ideas in the field and of being executive, and not more focus on the elaboration and “sophistication” of the norm”. The future grand commis or civil servants, whatever you prefer, will therefore have to be "closer to the world of startups and France on the move, rather than positioning itself alongside large companies which do nothing but encourage conformity”. However, it is easy to think that the new ENA will not be within everyone's reach anyway. So far the selection has been very rigorous: to enter you need a degree and in one of the last admission tests, that of 2015, only 6% of the candidates (already largely skimmed off at the start) have been admitted. Every year, out of three thousand candidates, only eighty are actually admitted.
ENA closes its doors, but not without having profoundly marked the history of France from the post-war period to today. As mentioned, four presidents of the Republic have been "enarques" (the first Giscard in 1974), but also 8 prime ministers, among which it is worth mentioning the former socialist candidate for the Elysée, Lionel Jospin, and the last two in charge under Macron, Edouard Philippe and the current premier Jean Castex. Among the ministers, the record was touched with the presidency of Georges Pompidou, when 37% of his governing team came from the big school. Subsequently, Mitterrand and Chirac also drew on the ENA reservoir, albeit to a lesser extent. However, the peak was reached in one of those "cohabitation" governments, that is, when Mitterrand and Chirac governed together, the first as president and the second as prime minister: in that case one minister out of three was an "enarch". Curiosity: the most "enified" ministries over the decades have been that of Foreign Affairs and that of Culture.
