Emmanuel Macron, Édouard Philippe, Jean Castex… Since 2017, at the Élysée as at Matignon, the enarques have occupied the head of state. While Emmanuel Macron abolished the ENA a year ago to replace it with the Higher Institute of Civil Servants, the appointment to the post of Prime Minister of a polytechnician in the person of Élisabeth Borne is a snub to the enarques: the last X at the head of the state was called… Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, who was also… enarque.
If the Élysée had wanted to make the diploma of its new Prime Minister a symbol, the appointment of a polytechnician at the head of the government has the taste of revenge for this great military school of engineers, which has countless heads of company and senior officials in key positions. And this, especially in the ministries of Ecological Transition, Equipment, Housing, Defense of course, and especially in Bercy, where the quarrels between X and enarques have always been epic and sometimes violent.
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Alumni future star
Until the appointment of Elisabeth Borne, l’X counted few leading political actors among its former students (the last were Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet or Bruno Mégret at the National Front), which was not without arousing a certain frustration among his elders: during the 225and anniversary of the school, in 2019, a website had been created to promote the talents of its alumni. If it listed several Nobel Prize winners, economists and very high-level scientists, the “famous politicians” section could only highlight Albert Lebrun, Sadi Carnot, as well as VGE… For the next anniversary, the star will undoubtedly be called Élisabeth Borne.