Mindful of the riots of the yellow vests, worried by the continuing social tensions and with an eye on the upcoming presidential elites, President Emmanuel Macron is finalizing the suppression of the Ecole nationale d’Administration (Ena), the school that in the last seventy years has formed the administrative elite of the Country and which is accused by many of having created in France a caste of officials and politicians, self-referential and omnipotent.
A new post-university institution
According to preliminary information, the expected reform foresees the birth of a new post-university institution that will bring together both the old enarchs and the engineers of the technical corps. Upon leaving school, graduates would join the public sector as “administrators of the state”, unlike what happens today when enarchs, based on the ranking, take up service directly in more or less prestigious bodies (from the Court of Auditors to the Council of State).
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For most, the reform could recall the phrase of the Leopard: “If we want everything to remain as it is, everything must change.” The president believes too much in the aristocracy of merit to eliminate entirely the philosophy of a school of which he himself is a graduate. That said, the desire is to open the public function to the more modest classes, and to scratch the negative aura from which the institution suffers.
Historical courses and appeals
Ena was created on October 9, 1945 by decision of Charles de Gaulle. In his Mémoires de Guerre, the general writes that the goal was to make the school “the basis of the new state”. Historically, conflicts are an opportunity for France to create new university institutions. Thus was born Sciences Po in 1872, after the defeat of Sedan. On the other hand, when the pandemic broke out, Macron himself said that the country was “at war”.