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French diplomats to strike over ‘avalanche’ of reforms

French diplomats are to strike next month for only the second time in their history, protesting an "avalanche" of reforms that unions say are undermining the foreign service at a time of global tensions.

Published: 19 May 2022 17:39 CEST

French diplomats to strike over 'avalanche' of reforms

The French foreign ministry. Photo by JEAN-PIERRE MULLER / AFP

“The Quai d’Orsay is disappearing little by little,” read a statement from six staff unions, using a familiar name for the French foreign ministry’s headquarters on the south bank of the Seine in central Paris.

The main complaint is a reform to career structures which will see the special status accorded to the most senior diplomats scrapped from next year, unions say.

“These measures dismantling our diplomatic service make no sense at a time when war has returned in Europe,” their joint statement said.

Under changes championed by President Emmanuel Macron, and rushed through by decree in April, top foreign service officials would lose their special protected status and be absorbed in a larger pool of elite public sector workers.

This could mean France’s roughly 700 most senior diplomats being asked to join other ministries and facing competition from non-diplomats for top postings.

“We’re very worried,” one serving diplomat told AFP on condition of anonymity. “We’re not interchangeable. I have the utmost respect for my colleagues in other state services but I don’t know how to do their job and they don’t know how to do mine.”

The strike has been called for June 2nd.

France has the third-biggest foreign service in the world after China and the United States, with around 14,000 employees at the foreign ministry in total.

The vast majority of these are non-diplomats or people on local contracts in countries around the world.

The aim of the government shake-up is to encourage more mobility between state services, which have historically been divided up into separate units with rules and job protections that make moving between them very difficult.

The government is also keen to attract new, more diverse candidates to the diplomatic service by opening new routes to the ministry, but critics see a danger of political interference.

“The door is now open to American-style nominations,” former ambassador to Washington and vocal critic of the reform, Gerard Araud, tweeted last month.

American ambassadors are named by the president, who often uses the power to reward political allies and donors with plum foreign postings.

The last and only strike by French diplomats was in 2003 to push for pay increases.

The stoppage on June 2nd underlines “the real malaise in the ministry, which does not have a rebellious culture,” Olivier da Silva from the CFTC union said.

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With his emphasis on, “strategic autonomy” for Europe in the economy and defence, many see subsequent events like the Covid pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine validating Macron’s vision.

But the minister acknowledged that the president’s star power might be “less powerful than in 2019”, when voters last picked the Brussels parliament.

Macron’s popularity has been battered by two years of minority government and contentious reforms on issues including pensions and immigration.

Polls show that inflation driven by successive crises is also a top concern for people feeling the pinch in their weekly shopping.

Surveys point to support in the high teens for Macron’s centrist party, well below the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) at around 30 percent, while the Socialists are snapping at the presidential camp’s heels for second place.

“It would be a real earthquake if the president’s majority came third” in the European elections, said political scientist Bruno Cautres.

The head of the governing party’s list for the elections, the little-known Valerie Hayer, is failing to make an impact, especially in the face of high-profile figures leading the rival lists in the shape Jordan Bardella, 28, for the far right and Raphael Glucksmann for the left.

It now appears Macron is ready to wade into the campaign in person.

On Thursday, Macron “wants to reclaim the initiative, avoid humiliation and try to keep the number-two spot at any cost,” Cautres said, noting that there was little hope his party could overtake the RN.

Heading into the European election, “Macron is hanging on to the core of his base”, said communications consultant Marie d’Ouince, a veteran of French centre-left politics.

“It’s still very early” in the campaign, she added, suggesting that support for the president’s party, “may crystallise bit by bit, but you need the right arguments”.

“We’re organised, we have the right candidate… above all we have the right ideas,” Macron said in Brussels last week alongside Hayer, a sitting MEP who has never held a government post.

For d’Ouince, “with recent international events, since Covid, Europe has become part of everyday life for French people”.

Macron should use the speech to “tally up everything Europe has contributed for France”, she said.

“Macron has always been at the cutting edge on the European question,” lending his voice weight at “a grave moment” for the bloc, Cautres said.

But he will have to remember he is addressing the French voting public, not just a prestigious university or think-tanks in Paris and Brussels.

Macron “has to be simple”, using “sentences… with a subject, a verb and an object,” d’Ouince said, citing a maxim of former president Francois Mitterrand.

“For instance, ‘If we hadn’t had Europe, we wouldn’t have had the vaccines'” against Covid, she suggested.

The eurosceptic, anti-immigrant RN has its riposte to Macron prepared. “This speech, whose content I can anticipate… will also mobilise our voters,” figurehead Marine Le Pen said this week.

She added that RN would call for France’s national parliament to be dissolved for new elections if the president’s party suffers a crushing defeat.

With three years until France’s next presidential election, Macron will hope to avoid setting up the RN for a win after twice selling himself as the man to exclude the far right from power.

He cannot run again in 2027, which adds the challenge of fending off a succession battle in his own camp that could leave him a lame duck.

Recent polls show his approval rating at just below 30 percent, leaving the risk that “his unpopularity wins out and people don’t listen to him”, d’Ouince said.