Bayrou and ENA
The Bayrou moment may be over. With less than three weeks to go before the first round of elections, the candidate of the extreme centre is dropping in the polls, while Le Pen inexorably rises. If that fall continues it will be a shame, for although it is hard to see quite how he would manage with only a small party behind him, Bayrou is a better alternative than either the divisive Sarkozy or the irresolute Royal. In my view he is the only one who can lead France out of its present doldrums. But even if he does not make it into the second round, he has sown terror in the camps of the other two principal candidates and forced both of them back from their extreme views to a more consensual centre.
Perhaps to put himself back into the public eye Bayrou said over the weekend that if elected he would close the Ecole Nationale d’Administration. That doesn’t mean much, if anything, to most English observers, but since I am making a film about the school, it fascinates me. My film is also critical of the school, using an enarque of distinction, Charles de Courson, now one of France’s main experts in public finance, to balance the naturally gung-ho views of ENA’s director. The bright and entertaining De Courson is also one of Bayrou’s chief advisors.
The school forms administrators, which sounds terminally grey, but since the top 10% go into what the French call the Grands Corps, those bodies like the Diplomatic Service or the Prefectural Service which in turn dominate government ministries, a small percentage become very powerful in the country. Some of them, so close to the seat of power, become seduced into a career in politics, like Chirac, Jospin, Royal, Juppé. And they start at the top, parachuted into a constituency of choice, quickly becoming ministers and higher. Others leave the public domain and move into France’s largest companies, both nationalised, like Gaz de France or SNCF, and private. Like the political, they are parachuted in at the top with no real idea of how to manage, and certainly no idea how to manage a large, often multinational company. The appalling mess made by the aptly-named Jean-Marie Messier at Vivendi is the prime example of what happens when an enarque runs a private company.
But in a sense that’s not the main problem, it’s more the other end, the selection. To get into ENA you need two university degrees or a degree from a Grande Ecole like Science Po. Then a year’s preparation course for the entrance exam. Six out of seven will fail the written exam, and the few who pass go on to sit three orals. Two are technical, one, the mythical Grand Oral, is general: candidates have to talk to 15 minutes on a given subject (and not 15 minutes 5 seconds, they have to wind up their argument and conclude exactly as the bell rings) before being faced with half an hour of cross questioning from a panel of illustrious sadists. Less than 100 students are accepted each year, and in 60 years there have been just 5,600 graduates, la crème de la crème. In the same period Oxbridge has churned out well over a million.
As a school, it’s not hard to fault: very few people can afford to study for so many years, so the intake perpetuates a monoculture of a certain class of person: most students’ parents are either in the Grand Corps or teachers in higher education. Over the 60 years of the school’s existence they have created a Parisian caste, inter-marrying like the ancien régime and, according to De Courson, like the ancien régime they are turning their backs on the problems of their co-citizens, not necessarily consciously but because they don’t hear, perhaps cannot understand the cries from the street. “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche.”
Bayrou sees clearly this “rupture profonde entre le pouvoir et les citoyens” and proposes a school for public service, like ENA, but taking students from mixed backgrounds, and without such high academic qualifications. He would make it impossible for the graduates to leak into the private sector.
The director of the school, in our film, accepts these criticisms but says they are no longer relevant: he was appointed 5 years ago precisely to put these things right, and although his reforms are not complete, he feels they are well on the way. And of course it will take a decade for his first graduates to percolate into the system, let alone make a mark on the public mind, so it may be that Bayrou is too late. The other thing the current director says is that whereas for years ENA generated great national pride, it has recently become fashionable to make the school scapegoat for France’s ills. Indeed many graduates now hide their diplomas in public.
Two things fascinate me from my brief experience with ENA and its students: one is their dedication to l’intérêt général, la chose publique. They call it a vocation, a noble calling, and the director confirms that public administration in France is seen as one of the nation’s highest careers. He too, like his students, often uses the word noblesse, which makes me think that (le comte) Charles de Courson is right when he compares them to the ancien régime. My impression is that in Britain the Civil Service is not seen as a noble career, fit only for the very highest minds and greatest souls. Rather the reverse. The other, non-related thing that struck me was that before the filming I contacted a recent graduate who had spent a weekend telling a mutual friend how irrelevant ENA is, how bad the teaching and inadequate the preparation for the real world. When I asked him whether he would say this on our film, he replied he was willing to tell me all his criticisms, but anonymously and not on camera. Clearly he is afraid of reprisals in his career. Which goes to show how tentacularly powerful ENA is.
As a solidly established member of the nobility, le comte Charles de Courson (his family is from Bayeux, his ancestors came over with the Conqueror) is not afraid to criticize, albeit with circumspection. He told me that unlike many of his class, his family have always shifted with the times, often as precursors. On his mother’s side, for example, one of his aristocratic forebears had voted for the execution of Louis XVI. Was that in the l’intérêt général or merely self-interest ?