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Building of the elite university in Strasbourg in April 2019
Photo: VINCENT KESSLER / REUTERS
French Prime Minister Emmanuel Macron closes the French elite university École Nationale d'Administration, or Ena for short, as he announced on Thursday.
The Institute of Public Service (ISP) should take the place of the elite cadre forge.
The aim of the reform is to make the civil service in France "more efficient, more transparent and more benevolent," said those around the president.
In addition, more young people from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds are to be recruited for the public service.
The "social elevator" works "less well today than it did 50 years ago," Macron complained at the beginning of this year.
Macron had the idea of closing the Ena two years ago.
In April 2019, the demonstrators of the yellow vests movement denounced the formation of the elite in the country - and the Ena was always an important building block.
Founded in October 1945 by Charles de Gaulle, the school has produced state officials, business leaders, ministers and presidents for decades.
Macron himself graduated from administration college 17 years ago.
The former presidents Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, Jacques Chirac and François Hollande are also so-called enarchs.
Those who made it to school belonged to the network of the most important personalities in French society.
The Financial Times once even described these connections as incestuous.
For those who passed the selection test, a path to the most important offices in the country was programmed.
Usually only those who were able to take part in special preparatory courses were able to do this: especially children from privileged parental homes, daughters and sons from well-off families.
Critics have long complained that the elites remained so among themselves and that children from socially disadvantaged backgrounds or even graduates from other universities had little chance of being admitted to the Ena and receiving high-ranking posts in the state apparatus.
kha / AFP
