Top Story: Enarchs

After leaving public office, they could resume their former jobs with full benefits.” Of course, their numbers grew in both sectors because the means of power could be turned to the benefit and welfare of the enarchs as a class.”

“Since 1958, six of seventeen prime ministers have been enarchs; nine have been military men, former civil servants or former employees of state run companies.” A tradition called “pantoflauge” permits enarchs to be loaned to private companies.”

Compare, for example, the ease with which the Enarchs pushed through France’s conversion to nuclear energy in the Seventies with the endless consultations and almost comical delays associated with the British rail link to the Channel tunnel. In Siedentop’s view, it is the fault of France’s political elite -specifically, the upper echelons of the French civil service known as the “Enarchs”. It is the Enarchs who have been the brains behind the Maastricht Treaty and the euro. This explains why civil servants account for more than a half of our deputies, and why enarchs trust top level jobs in this hierarchy. Non-enarch CEOs sometimes behave like bad enarchs and rent seekers, and rent seeking exists in many places elsewhere. The massive presence of enarchs at the top of Cac40 businesses and simultaneously at the head of the most important directions in civil services creates a dangerous confusion of interests that doesn’t lead our businesses and the laws which regulate their activities in a good direction.

Enarchs quickly took many key positions inside French administration. No matter if one enarch is a conservative, or a liberal and another one is a social democrat, he’s enarch first: the corporation always helps its members to climb the steps through French civil service. Some Enarchs, however, are remarkable people and are today denouncing the abuses of the French system. His government has anall-time high of Enarchs . Nearly half the 750 Enarchs in business are CEOs.