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Macron to abolish France’s most elite French university ENA

French President Emmanuel Macron is on Thursday to abolish the top university he attended along with four of the last six presidents in a move portrayed as a blow against elitism and in favour of greater diversity.

Published: 8 April 2021 16:47 CEST

Macron to abolish France's most elite French university ENA

French President Emmanuel Macron. Photo by Ludovic MARIN / AFP

The Ecole Nationale d’Administration, known as ENA, is a small Strasbourg-based finishing school for top civil servants that plays an outsized role in French public life.

Created in the aftermath of World War II, admission virtually guarantees an influential job in the upper reaches of the public sector and has long been viewed as the most promising route into politics.

Macron, who attended from 2002-2004, announced plans to scrap the institution in 2019 following ‘yellow vest’ anti-government protests which highlighted inequality.

ENA class of 1994/1996. in Strasbourg. Photo by STR / AFP

Later Thursday, he was set to announce a new school with a new name that will be responsible for training students for senior public sector roles, with an emphasis on opening up pathways for people from poorer or ethnic minority backgrounds.

The idea is to “offer closer, more efficient, more transparent and more benevolent public services to French people,” an aide told reporters ahead of the announcement.

Macron has previously criticised ENA for taking in fewer students from a working-class background than at the end of the last century, even though the school is in theory open to all.

In February, Macron said that 1,000 places would be created in two new programmes to prepare students from disadvantaged backgrounds for applying to France’s top colleges.

He said the “social elevator” in France – the process by which people from poorer backgrounds rise to prominent positions – “works less well than 50 years ago”.

French students at conference in ENA back in 2013. Photo: PATRICK HERTZOG / AFP

Studies show that ENA’s student intake is dominated by the children of wealthy, professional families.

“Among the vital problems in France, there is one that you are aware of every day: it’s the absolute fracture between the base of society – people who work, who are retired, who are unemployed, young people, students – and the supposed elite,” François Bayrou, a close political ally of Macron, told France Inter radio on Thursday.

The school was created in 1945 when France needed to rebuild its civil service, parts of which had collaborated with France’s Nazi occupiers during World War II.

It succeeded initially in opening up the vast public administration to people drawn from different backgrounds, rather than the old aristocracy which had traditionally dominated the French state.

Its success in producing highly-qualified public administrators has spawned copycat institutions in other countries, however, including Russia.

Member comments

Anonymous - 9 April 2021 at 08:17 CEST

Someone should explain to him that pandering to the masses for the sake of a few extra votes does not always have benefits.

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Azerbaijan vehemently rejects the accusation it bears responsibility for the riots that have led to the deaths of five people and rattled the Paris government.

But it is just the latest in a litany of tensions between Paris and Baku and not the first time France has accused Azerbaijan of being behind an alleged disinformation campaign.

The riots in New Caledonia, a French territory lying between Australia and Fiji, were sparked by moves to agree a new voting law that supporters of independence from France say discriminates against the indigenous Kanak population.

Paris points to the sudden emergence of Azerbaijani flags alongside Kanak symbols in the protests, while a group linked to the Baku authorities is openly backing separatists while condemning Paris.

“This isn’t a fantasy. It’s a reality,” interior minister Gérald Darmanin told television channel France 2 when asked if Azerbaijan, China and Russia were interfering in New Caledonia.

“I regret that some of the Caledonian pro-independence leaders have made a deal with Azerbaijan. It’s indisputable,” he alleged.

But he added: “Even if there are attempts at interference… France is sovereign on its own territory, and so much the better”.

“We completely reject the baseless accusations,” Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry spokesman Ayhan Hajizadeh said.

“We refute any connection between the leaders of the struggle for freedom in Caledonia and Azerbaijan.”

In images widely shared on social media, a reportage broadcast Wednesday on the French channel TF1 showed some pro-independence supporters wearing T-shirts adorned with the Azerbaijani flag.

Tensions between Paris and Baku have grown in the wake of the 2020 war and 2023 lightning offensive that Azerbaijan waged to regain control of its breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region from ethnic Armenian separatists.

France is a traditional ally of Christian Armenia, Azerbaijan’s neighbour and historic rival, and is also home to a large Armenian diaspora.

Darmanin said Azerbaijan – led since 2003 by President Ilham Aliyev, who succeeded his father Heydar – was a “dictatorship”.

On Wednesday, the Paris government also banned social network TikTok from operating in New Caledonia.

Tiktok, whose parent company is Chinese, has been widely used by protesters. Critics fear it is being employed to spread disinformation coming from foreign countries.

Azerbaijan invited separatists from the French territories of Martinique, French Guiana, New Caledonia and French Polynesia to Baku for a conference in July 2023.

The meeting saw the creation of the “Baku Initiative Group”, whose stated aim is to support “French liberation and anti-colonialist movements”.

The group published a statement this week condemning the French parliament’s proposed change to New Caledonia’s constitution, which would allow outsiders who moved to the territory at least 10 years ago the right to vote in its elections.

Pro-independence forces say that would dilute the vote of Kanaks, who make up about 40 percent of the population.

“We stand in solidarity with our Kanak friends and support their fair struggle,” the Baku Initiative Group said.

Raphael Glucksmann, the lawmaker heading the list for the French Socialists in June’s European Parliament elections, told Public Senat television that Azerbaijan had made “attempts to interfere… for months”.

He said the underlying problem behind the unrest was a domestic dispute over election reform, not agitation fomented by “foreign actors”.

But he accused Azerbaijan of “seizing on internal problems.”

A French government source, who asked not to be named, said pro-Azerbaijani social media accounts had on Wednesday posted an edited montage purporting to show two white police officers with rifles aimed at dead Kanaks.

“It’s a pretty massive campaign, with around 4,000 posts generated by (these) accounts,” the source told AFP.

“They are reusing techniques already used during a previous smear campaign called Olympia.”

In November, France had already accused actors linked to Azerbaijan of carrying out a disinformation campaign aimed at damaging its reputation over its ability to host the Olympic Games in Paris. Baku also rejected these accusations.