Immigration law: civil servant status soon open to non-European foreigners?

The immigration bill definitely sparks a lot of debate in French society. While the text must arrive in the Senate on Monday November 6, before being discussed in the National Assembly in December, the political class is divided on the famous article 3 relating to “occupations with tensions”. The think tank, the “Sense of Public Service”, wishes to “reexamine the conditions of access of non-European foreigners to the public service”. Bringing together a few dozen public officials, the think tank intends to tackle the crisis in the attractiveness of the civil service. Which “deprives itself of skills by excluding part of the population”. According to him, more than 4 million civil servant jobs “cannot be occupied by non-European foreigners.”

Indeed, if this category of the population is already present in certain private sectors, such as construction or catering, or public sectors, such as SNCF or Social Security, they cannot join the public service. Considering that public services constitute “the foundation of our social model”, the think tank sees them as “a vector of republican integration”, which “translates our collective aspirations for equality in rights and dignity.” If a bill to this effect has been tabled in the National Assembly and an amendment has been tabled in the Senate, the latter have little chance of being adopted. Especially since the government does not want to rush the right, with whom relations are already at loggerheads on the question of the regularization of certain foreigners in sectors lacking personnel.

The entourage of the Minister of the Civil Service, Stanislas Guerini also confirms to Les Échos that a “statutory extension is not under study”, recalling that “the hiring of non-European foreigners is already possible as as contractual agents. No matter, Le Sens du service does not budge on this point. “The status of contract worker is often more precarious than that of permanent civil servant: (foreigners) are most often recruited on fixed-term contracts (CDD). They cannot then benefit from any prospect of career development, salary or professional mobility,” he points out to the economic daily. And to mention “the difficulties that this precariousness induces when you have to renew your residence permit”.