“Unlike the right, we are not obsessed with the number of civil servants”

A small tackle to Valérie Pécresse. Invited to Europe 1 this Wednesday morning, Amélie de Montchalin explained that the government was not “obsessed with the number of civil servants, unlike the right”, while the candidate LR wants to cut 150,000 positions in the civil service if she is elected President of the Republic.

An “accounting view of things”

“Anyone who makes you believe that we will serve the French people better by reducing the number of civil servants is misguided and weakens the state,” said the Minister of Transformation and Public Service at the microphone of Sonia Mabrouk. For Amélie de Montchalin, the vision of the right on this subject is an “accounting vision of things” which does not “strengthen anyone”. “A presidential candidate only talks about reductions and cuts. The record, we know, is that between 2007 and 2012: it’s fewer agents on the ground,” laments the minister.

Unlike the right and Valérie Pécresse, who therefore wants to eliminate 200,000 civil servant positions, Amélie de Montchalin claims to defend a public service which “is where the French live, which meets their needs, which is redeployed, which is reorganized, and which, of course, changes”.

The proximity of officials

On Europe 1, the Minister of the Public Service thus promised that “the number of civil servants would be exactly the same at the end of the five-year term, in 2022, as at the beginning of 2017”. Rather than focusing on numbers, Amélie de Montchalin prefers to focus on “the efficiency of the public service and its proximity”. For her, it is necessary that there are “fewer people in the ministries and many more people in the police stations, in the courts and in the hospitals”.

In wishing to eliminate thousands of civil servant posts, “Valérie Pécresse takes advantage of Margaret Thatcher” and “Thatcher is social cruelty”, concludes the minister.