Appendix 2 / Glossary
As the reader engages in this exploration of France’s field of power, he or she is bound to come across a whole set of idiosyncratic notions from the political and bureaucratic lexicon. Rather than providing a word-by-word translation or identifying at all costs functional equivalents for these many historically rooted institutions and professions, we have decided to keep the French wording while listing all of these into a little glossary that provides the definitional and contextual elements needed to make sense of these often “untranslatable” terms. These institutions and groups cover essentially five clusters of words mentioned in the body of the text (noted in italics): state elites, the ministry of economy and finance, regulatory agencies, ethics of public officials, and supreme courts.
State Elites
École nationale d’administration: the ENA was created in 1945 to professionalize the training provided to French top civil servants and democratize the access to the state grands corps. It is based on a highly selective national concours which selects each year 50 to 100 students (to whom must be added career civil servants who come for vocational training). After two years of seminars and internships, the ENA ranks the énarques (former graduates) according to their results: the top-ranked students (between 12 and 15 students) usually join the three state grands corps (Inspection des finances, Conseil d’État, or Cour des comptes). The other students will join the French treasury, the diplomatic service, lower ranks of administrative justice, ministries’ bureaucracy, and so on. Generally speaking, ENA graduates monopolize the state’s top managerial positions such as ministries’ bureaucratic departments (directions d’administration centrale). Beyond administration, the ENA has also become the main breeding ground for top positions in politics (three presidents, half of the prime ministers and a countless number of ministers, etc.) as well as in business.
Grands corps: While there is no formal list of the grands corps, they are usually divided into two categories: the grands corps techniques (mostly engineers) and the grands corps administratifs (hereafter state grands corps), which are recruited through the École nationale d’administration and composed of the Inspection des finances, the Cour des comptes, and the Conseil d’État. While the grands corps hold most of the top executive positions of the state, it is important to add that most CEOs of large French companies are former members of the grands corps.
Cabinets ministériels: Ministers are allowed to constitute a cabinet, a small staff of five to twenty members (depending on the importance of the ministry) headed by a directeur de cabinet (cabinet’s chief of staff), an experienced civil servant drawn from the state grands corps who plays a key role in all interministerial negotiations needed when it comes to drafting new decrees or bill projects. Positions in cabinets ministériels are also often a springboard for top positions in the public or private sector.
In addition to his or her own cabinet, prime ministers are also helped by a specific administrative unit, the secrétariat général du gouvernement, a body of nearly a hundred top civil servants, traditionally headed by a member of the Conseil d’État, in charge of securing the coordination of the work of government. Similar yet sector-specific coordinating units include the Secrétariat général pour les affaires européennes, and the Secrétariat général de la défense nationale. The president of the Republic is also backed by a cabinet and an administrative unit, the secrétariat général de l’Élysée (after the name of the Élysée Palace where French presidents have their official residence).
Ministry of Economy and Finance
It is hard to overstate the importance of the Ministry of the Economy and Finance. Often referred to as “Bercy,” after the district in Paris where the huge building of the ministry is located, it is arguably the most important and influential ministry in French government. It brings together all key economic and financial functions of the state from budget drafting to tax and financial regulation (and control thereof), state holdings, external trade, as well as the financing of French sovereign debt and public investment funds. Given its size, there are often various junior ministers attached to the ministry. Among its key departments, one should mention:
The Direction du Trésor (Treasury Office) considered as the most prestigious department, populated by members of the Inspection des finances (state grand corps). They are in charge of macroeconomic forecast, financing of French public debts, and national funds (Agence France Trésor) as well as international and European negotiations in economic and financial matters. In 2004, a new unit was created, the Agence des participations de l’État (APE), in order to manage the state’s holdings (about seventy firms including large companies such as Gaz de France, Engie, France Telecom, Renault, Aéroport de Paris, Banque publique d’investissement, Air France, SNCF, etc.).
The Direction générale de la concurrence, de la consommation et de la répression des fraudes (DGCCRF—General Directorate for Competition Policy, Consumer Affairs, and Fraud Control) is in charge of regulating market competition together with the competition regulatory agency (Autorité de la concurrence), protecting consumers’ safety, and ensuring compliance with competition rules “favoring the development of open and transparent markets.”
The Direction générale des Finances publiques is in charge of drafting tax bills but also of collecting taxes (VAT, corporate tax, income tax) and controlling the biggest firms. While the top managers of the DGFIP come from the ENA, tax inspectors are mostly recruited through a special concours leading to the École nationale des finances publiques (formerly École nationale des impôts [ENI]).
Regulatory Agencies
From the late 1980s onward, the liberalization of a number of former state monopolies in the fields of transport, media, and energy sectors has led to the creation of a dense web of regulatory agencies in charge of regulating these new markets. These new bodies, formally independent from the bureaucratic circuit of command, are composed of a president and a board of five to twenty members nominated by political authorities (but most of them are chosen within the state grands corps).
The Autorité des marchés financiers, was created in 2003 (as a continuation of the former Commission des operations boursières) is one of the most important regulatory agencies in terms of size (circa 450 employees) and jurisdiction. It regulates participants and products in France’s financial markets. Where necessary, it can conduct investigations and issue sanctions.
The Autorité de la concurrence created in 2008 as France’s national competition regulator—replacing and strengthening the powers of the old Conseil de la concurrence. Its role is to fight against anticompetitive practices (cartels, abuse of dominant position, etc.) and control the proper competitive function of the markets in tight coordination with the European Commission Competition Directorate General. It has about two hundred employees. The Autorité de la concurrence is complemented by sector-specific agencies: the Autorité de régulation des activités ferroviaires (ARAF) founded in 2010 is the regulatory agency in charge of ensuring and “encouraging competition in rail transport”; the Commission de régulation de l’énergie (CRE) created in 2000 which regulates the electricity and gas markets, and so on.
Ethics of Public Officials
Pantouflage: the term was initially coined for former graduates of the École Polytechnique (France’s grande école recruiting state engineers) who left public service immediately after obtaining their degree and needed to pay to the state a so-called pantoufle (slipper) to compensate for the education costs. It now applies to all public agents and politicians who join the private sector after assuming a public office. It is important to note that the word pantouflage bears a different meaning than revolving doors as it does not imply moves back and forth but rather a departure from the public sector. Indeed, when it was noticed that some of these individuals were actually coming back to the public sector, a new word was coined: retro-pantouflage.
Up until 2019, the pantouflages were controlled by a consultative commission de déontologie (ethics committee) composed of members of the state grands corps which would give an Opinion (not public) and, in some cases, express Reservations that the outgoing civil servant was supposed to follow in his or her activities in the private sector. A new statute law was adopted in August 2019 which merges the commission de déontologie into the Haute Autorité pour la transparence de la vie publique (High Authority for transparency in public life), thereby further reinforcing the ever-growing competences of this public body initially created in 2013 to receive and control the declarations of assets (déclaration de patrimoine) and of interests of close to fifteen thousand “public managers” (responsables publics) whether politicians or civil servants, when taking their official duties. In 2017, the High Authority had also been given the task to compile and manage a public register of lobbysts (Répertoire des représentants d’intérêts).
French Judicial System
The French judicial branch is two-fold: it is composed of administrative courts (headed by the Conseil d’État) that have jurisdiction over claims against administrators or public bodies on the one side; and of civil and criminal courts (headed by the Cour de cassation) on the other. To this traditional dualist structure, one should add the Conseil constitutionnel which has the monopoly of constitutional review, and the Cour des comptes which is a specialized administrative court charged with conducting financial and legislative audits of most public institutions.
The Conseil d’État (located in the Palais-Royal palace) decides on claims against national-level administrative decisions (e.g., orders, rules, regulations, and decisions of the executive branch) and appeals from lower administrative courts. Initially created by Napoleon in 1799, it acts both as a legal adviser to the government and as a supreme court for administrative justice. It recruits first of all among the top ranking ENA graduates (but also in part through political nomination): its members constitute a state grand corps and are called to top managing positions in the state from ministers’ and president’s chief of staff positions to ministerial legal departments, regulatory agencies, and so forth.
The Cour de cassation is the supreme court of appeal for civil and criminal litigation. It is exclusively composed of end-of-career magistrats. French magistrats are most often recruited for lifetime civil service positions through a national concours immediately after law school and trained at the École nationale de la magistrature in Bordeaux.
The Conseil constitutionnel is the supreme constitutional court. Housed in the Palais-Royal palace (just like the Conseil d’État), its main activity is to rule on the conformity of statutes with the Constitution of the Fifth Republic (October 1958) and constitutional principles and rules, notably those from the 1789 French Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen and the Preamble of the Constitution of the Fourth Republic (1946). The president of the Republic as well as sixty MPs or senators can request a constitutional review immediately after the vote of a new statute law (a priori constitutional review). A constitutional amendment introduced in July 2008 has created a new procedure, the so-called Question prioritaire de constitutionnalité, which allows for citizens as well legal persons that are part to a lawsuit to ask the Conseil to review whether the law applied in the case is constitutional (a posteriori constitutional review).
Lawyers and Bar Associations: French avocats are historically organized around principles of independence and self-government of the 164 local bar associations (barreau). Every two years, each one of these bar associations elects its Conseil de l’ordre (Council of Order) that has regulatory as well as disciplinary powers, and a batônnier who acts as president.
In December 1990, an important statute law integrated the conseillers juridiques into the avocats profession. While historically French conseillers juridiques were not allowed to go and plead before courts, they were often structured in large law firms and practiced in particular tax law. Conversely, avocats had a quasi monopoly on defense but remained mostly structured around small structures centered on litigation.
Today, the profession counts circa 67,000 members. The Paris Bar association (barreau de Paris) represents no less than 42 percent of French lawyers (28,000 lawyers) and the Hauts-de-Seine Bar which is also considered in this book as its jurisdiction covers the district of La Défense where most large French companies have their headquarters, has circa 2,200 members.