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gp1234
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Just over ten years ago, an extremely insightful book about the French was published; "On The Brink", by Jonathan Fenby. For a shrewd look into the intricate depths of the French psyche, it's right up there with the best works of its kind.
More than a decade on, how have things changed since Fenby's appreciation? Now and again I'll post an extract from his book - on this occasion on the subject of France's civil servants. So with all the promises from first Chirac, and now Sarkozy, has anything changed? Hmm...
*francs - in the original edition - I've converted to approx. equivalent in euros
More than a decade on, how have things changed since Fenby's appreciation? Now and again I'll post an extract from his book - on this occasion on the subject of France's civil servants. So with all the promises from first Chirac, and now Sarkozy, has anything changed? Hmm...
"This state which cannot accept that any part of national life is beyond its reach is by far the biggest employer in the country. Its civil servants make up a quarter of the workforce - compared to 14-15 per cent in Britain and Germany. Their salaries take up almost one-sixth of the national income. As for the general belief that selfless civil servants are less well-paid than their peers in the private sector, an independent study in 1994 showed the reverse to be true in non-executive jobs. Despite the declining numbers of farmers, the Agricultural Ministry still employs as many functionaries as it did a decade ago. Long after the last big war, the Ex-Servicemen's Ministry costs 4 billion euros* a year. Reform of other sectors of national life may be on the agenda, but not the sacred caste of the functionaries of the state. Whereas public-sector companies have been put under the spotlight, readied for privatisation or gone through painful slimming cures, the state has left its great administrative army alone. One investigation suggested that the number of hidden civil service scandals might exceed those that had come to light elsewhere - but no investigating magistrates have stuck their noses into the inner workings of the nation's administrative machinery. A list of white elephants spawned by bureaucratic incompetence drawn up by the magazine Le Point contained some of the following gems: the 130 million-euro high-speed train station at Lyon airport that handles only 500 passengers a day; the railway construction in Normandy where a new platform was built 300 metres away from the station; a 11 million-euro museum in Nice which was still empty ten years after being commissioned; a projected road tunnel in Toulon which collapsed and was abandoned after 200 million euros had been spent on it; a planned conference centre in Paris which remained unbuilt despite the expenditure of 120 million euros; and a road bridge in Normandy with no road connected to it. No heads have rolled, or not to the knowledge of the taxpayer who footed the bill in each case. From teachers to mandarins, the civil service is unaccountable to anybody except itself. A damning report by an Inspecteur des Finances who had been close to the Socialists spoke of a looming disaster caused by the failure of successive governments to get to grips with the size and cost of the public-service sector."
Fenby will have penned that some twelve or thirteen years ago. My impression is that hardly anything has changed for the better. Occasionally we hear of the wrong sort of civil servant being targeted - limiting the supply of new teachers for example, increasing class sizes. But the red tape functionaries, ie not the front line teachers and nurses, seem as ever to escape unscathed.
*francs - in the original edition - I've converted to approx. equivalent in euros