The Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs indicated on Saturday through a decree published in the Official Journal, the abolition of the diplomatic corps. A wish of the president-candidate Emmanuel Macron, in his reform of the senior civil service.
The diplomatic corps represents a group of functions attached to the embassy of a country and which can be located either abroad or in the State in question.
The same goes for prefects, diplomats, or even magistrates of the Court of Auditors.
This represents nearly 6,000 positions, which should thus lose their membership in their original body to be all grouped under the same status, that of administrator of the State.
A choice denounced by the opposition
The implementation of this decree quickly became an electoral issue.
Indeed, Marine Le Pen pointed to the replacement of “impartial state servants by cronyism”.
A few days before the end of his mandate, Emmanuel Macron published the decree abolishing our diplomatic corps. He wants to replace impartial servants of the state with cronyism.
President, I will restore a diplomat status based on merit and national interest. pic.twitter.com/yAXGR5Yrgv
– Marine Le Pen (@MLP_officiel) April 18, 2022
The National Rally candidate also pledged to restore the prefectural body, doomed to extinction on January 1, 2023.
An anger shared by Jean-Luc Mélenchon. The rebel also regretted the destruction of the French “diplomatic network”, installed for “several centuries”.
Official journal: abolition of the diplomatic corps. France saw its diplomatic network destroyed after several centuries. The 2nd in the world. Promo buddies will be able to be named. Huge sadness.
— Jean-Luc Melenchon (@JLMelenchon) April 18, 2022
The reform of the diplomatic corps concerns even Parliament.
Last January, Senator Les Républicains Catherine Dumas raised the “legitimate” concern of French diplomats “concerned by the gradual disappearance of the bodies of foreign affairs adviser and minister plenipotentiary from 2023”.