Bruno Retaillleau wants to ask prefects to “deport more and regularize less”

“Debureaucratize at all levels” : the newly appointed Minister of Civil Service, and of the Simplification and Transformation of Public Action, Guillaume Kasbarian, made a thunderous introduction on Monday, immediately arousing the distrust of the unions. “We must free the French from the burden of administrative procedures”said the former Minister of Housing in Paris, on the occasion of the handover ceremony with his predecessor, Stanislas Guerini.

Guillaume Kasbarian took up Article 15 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, according to which “society has the right to demand an account from any public agent of his administration.” This choice is not to the taste of Mylène Jacquot, general secretary of CFDT-Public Services: “We cannot oppose users” to the 5.7 million public sector employees, she argued.

There “simplification (…) must never be to the detriment of the quality of public service”stressed Guillaume Kasbarian, assuring that he had set himself the objective of “make life easier for the French and public officials”In a press release published on Sunday, the Solidaires-Fonction publique union, the sixth largest civil servants’ union, expressed concern about the addition of the word “simplification” to the title of the ministry: “Everyone knows that the term corresponds to the desire to reduce the number of civil servants and to degrade the quality of public service.”

The minister also welcomed the reform on Monday. “ambitious” of the civil service prepared by his predecessor, without specifying the fate he would reserve for it. Frozen by the dissolution of the Assembly, this bill, much criticized by the unions, planned to increase merit-based pay, facilitate dismissals and even eliminate the historic system of categories (A, B and C) of the civil service.