It was one of the measures of Emmanuel Macron’s senior civil service reform. The disappearance of the diplomatic corps, formalized in the Official Journal of April 18, made the opposition react again. “Extinction”. The expression appears, written in full, in the first article of the decree published Monday in the Official Journal and “applying to the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs of the reform of the senior civil service”. As Emmanuel Macron had decided, the diplomatic corps (in reality two corps, that of foreign affairs advisers and that of plenipotentiary ministers) is about to disappear, giving way to a much larger entity bringing together administrators who will be able to pass more easily from one department to another. People entered it most often either after the ENA, or by passing one of the ministry’s competitions to become a foreign affairs adviser to the general framework – the famous competition for “executives from the Orient”. Read alsoAmélie de Montchalin: “Our country needs speed and efficiency” Promised in 2017, the reform of the senior civil service ends as follows: it will also have taken with it the ENA, which has become the National Institute of public service (INSP) on 1 January. A time left aside, this reform was put back on the agenda with alacrity following the crisis of the “yellow vests”. The objective, in particular, was to put an end to “lifetime careers” at the top of the state apparatus, and to make the recruitment and transfers of these senior leaders working in the ministries and who constitute what the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu called it “State Nobility”. “Variing experiences” Thus, like the prefects, sub-prefects or other finance inspectors before them, the 800 senior officials of the Quai d’Orsay will see their body disappear, and with it their “specialization” in Foreign Affairs: “ After the ENA, you went into a body from which you did not leave. Today, our diplomats want to vary the experiences. At the Quai d’Orsay, you may want to go to the Ministry of Agriculture and then come back. We are setting up two compulsory mobilities. They will make it possible to broaden skills, without destroying diplomacy: those who want to remain diplomats throughout their careers will remain so”, specifies in the columns of Parisian one of the advisers of the minister in charge of this reform Amélie de Montchalin. Clearly, rather than forming compartmentalized and specialized bodies, senior civil servants will be part of a single large body in which careers will make it easier to move from one skill to another. Civil servants currently belonging to the diplomatic corps are encouraged to join this new interdepartmental group as of now, but they are not obliged to do so. To read also “Will France be the only country in Europe to give up its career diplomacy?” Most of the French diplomats who reacted to this announcement expressed reservations – if not quite virulent criticism, despite the duty of reserve to which they are bound. “France will therefore be the only major Western country without professional diplomats. A story of several centuries comes to an end. The door is now open to American-style appointments,” wrote the former French ambassador to Washington Gérard Araud, who was relayed by the current French ambassador to Ukraine, Étienne de Poncins. As soon as this reform was revealed, in a letter from Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian on November 9, many diplomats made their disapproval public. Previously, and on condition of anonymity, around fifty of them had already alerted in a column published in Le Monde. A system more conducive to “cronyism”? Very quickly the subject was invited into the political debate. “The promo buddies will be able to be named,” wrote Jean-Luc Mélenchon in reaction to what he considers to be a system allowing more slipping and dismissals than before. What also thinks Marine Le Pen, who committed yesterday if she is elected to restore “a status of diplomat based on merit and the national interest”. Several socialist parliamentarians, including former ministers, had expressed similar reservations in the columns of Le Figaro last January. “On the one hand, France affirms its desire to project a very high level diplomacy everywhere in the world and at the same time, the government proposes an administrative restructuring which would only weaken an already efficient tool. Diplomacy cannot be an adjustment variable,” they wrote. On the right, Éric Ciotti or Valérie Boyer also reacted yesterday. “Macron shoots down a new pillar of our sovereign state today” writes the deputy of the Alpes-Maritimes, unsuccessful candidate for the Republican primary.