“Merit” remuneration of civil servants: what is Emmanuel Macron’s project?

For the second time since coming to power, Emmanuel Macron brought together some 400 journalists at the Élysée for a large-format press conference. A major media sequence during which the President of the Republic has not forgotten the public service. While he considered that “effort and merit are not sufficiently recognized” in France, the Head of State announced that he wanted to ensure that, for civil servants, “the main criterion for advancement is, in addition to seniority, merit.

An announcement which is nothing very new, and goes in line with the ambitions of Stanislas Guerini, who is still waiting to be officially reappointed as Minister of the Civil Service. Already in February 2023, this close friend of Emmanuel Macron - then Minister of Transformation and the Civil Service - had in fact announced a major reform of the civil service which would notably put merit at the heart of the remuneration of public agents.

Reform that he detailed a little more last September, during his back-to-school visit to the Lyon Regional Administration Institute, and which will involve “a bill around a few essential principles: better rewarding the merit of agents, encourage and facilitate mobility in the public service and put skills at the heart of the journey. Before specifying that the recognition of “individual and collective merits” would amount to “more remunerating the agent who will have done more, who will have done better, more remunerating the team who will have been mobilized in a period of crisis, who will have collectively led to indeed a demanding project. This Tuesday evening, Emmanuel Macron therefore confirmed that the establishment of merit-based pay would be at the center of the bill that the government should present in the coming weeks. And which risks clashing with the unions, headwinds against a measure which seems like a chestnut tree.

“We completely disagree with this vision,” reacted Céline Verzeletti, confederal secretary of the CGT, in September. It is out of the question that we accept a system of compensation or bonuses decided at the goodwill of the State, and which in no way guarantees better remuneration. “Especially since these bonuses and allowances are not taken into account in the calculation of pensions – even though we are asked to work more,” adds Céline Verzeletti. A pill which will probably have difficulty getting through to representatives of civil servants.

But at a time when the civil service is struggling to attract talent, even as the French are demanding more present and more efficient public services, Stanislas Guerini intends to play on several fronts to reform the civil service. Mobility between sides, more fluidity in entering or leaving civil servant status, development of continuing training,... so many subjects which will find their place in the text which will soon see the light of day. “The reform will be centered on a few principles which will breathe new life into the civil service and remove obstacles around the notions of merit, mobility and management by skills,” Stanislas Guerini explained to Le Figaro last September. All to restore the attractiveness of France's largest employer.

Objectives that the civil service transformation law had already set four years ago. Without much success according to a report from the Court of Auditors published last November. The Sages of Rue Cambon underline that the tools made available to public employers to strengthen the attractiveness of the public service have not been used wisely.