Edouard Philippe has "no dogma" as to the desirable number of officials, after Emmanuel Macron has raised the possible abandonment of the goal of 120,000 job cuts by 2022. "I have no dogma on the number of civil servants, they are increased where there are needs, as in the police or the armies, and posts are removed where the needs change, like the taxes ", affirms Sunday the Prime Minister in an interview with the Figaro , on the eve of the examination of the project of reform of the civil service by the deputies.
"I deeply believe that one can reform the state, preserve, even improve the quality of public service while decreasing the number of civil servants," adds the head of government.
"The downsizing, a consequence of the transformation of the public sphere"
At his press conference on April 25, the head of state said he was ready to "give up", "if it is not tenable", the goal he had set to remove 120,000 posts civil servants by the end of the five-year term - out of 5.5 million employees in the three sides of the civil service (state, hospital, territorial). He had asked the government to "give his analysis by the summer" on this file. For Édouard Philippe, "the transformation of the public sphere is the goal, and the decline in numbers, a consequence.I remember that during the presidential campaign, Francois Fillon, proposed to remove 500,000 positions of officials ... "
"The same people who supported this goal are telling us today that we often go too far, it's like the contracts that were helped." The Republicans wanted to completely eliminate them two years ago, now they are shouting at the crime of lèse-majesté because we have reduced the number by half. " The draft reform of the public service, which the Assembly begins the review Monday, aims in particular at more flexibility in recruitment with increased use of contract workers - already 1 million - facilitated mobility, or a "simplified" social dialogue with a redesign of the instances.
Édouard Philippe judges the conditions for maintaining him at Matignon. After two years in a position considered among the hardest of politics, Prime Minister Philippe Philippe, in an interview Sunday at Le Figaro , that conditions are met for its maintenance Matignon. "I consider that a prime minister is in Matignon as long as three conditions are met: the confidence of the president, the support of the parliamentary majority and the will to do, in my eyes they are fully met," he explains. , taking care to stress that "the decision does not belong to him".