The École nationale d’administration, one of the French graduate schools (Grandes écoles), was created in 1945 by Charles de Gaulle to democratise access to the senior civil service. It is now entrusted with the selection and initial training of senior French officials. The ENA is one of the symbols of the Republican meritocracy, along with École normale supérieure and Ecole polytechnique (“X”), offering its alumni access to high positions within the state. It has now been almost completely relocated to Strasbourg to emphasise its European character. The ENA produces around 100 graduates every year, known as énarques. ENA is seen as the method of choice to reach the administrative Grand Corps of the State.
The main reason for entering ENA is that it has a legal quasi-monopoly over access to some of the most prestigious positions in the French civil service, just as the École polytechnique fulfills this role for other prestigious and technical positions, while some schools like the École nationale des impôts allow access to very specific positions. ENA was created to make recruitment for various high administrative bodies more rational and democratic. According to this approach, a system solely based on academic proficiency and competitive examinations, renders recruitment to top positions more transparent without suspicion of political or personal preference.
Admission to ENA is granted based a competitive examination at the beginning of September, which people generally take after completing studies at the Institut d’études politiques de Paris (more widely known as Sciences Po) or any prép’ena ( preparatory classes for the ENA examination in universities or others grandes écoles). Other exam processes govern admission for career civil servants (concours interne) and for all other people, already active in business, political or union activities (troisième concours). ENA ranks students according to their academic merit; students are then asked, in order of decreasing merit, the service that they want to join. While the top-ranked join prestigious corps such as the Inspection générale des finances, Conseil d’État or Cour des comptes, other will join e.g. the diplomatic service, ministries, and administrative justice or préfectures. Eventually, some enter national politics, while many end up in high-level administrative positions. To quote ENA’s site:
In fact, although these famous alumni are the most visible, the majority are largely unknown, lead quiet and useful careers in our civil service, and don’t recognise themselves in the stereotyped images about our school.
Academic years at ENA are known as promotions, and are named by the students after outstanding French, Foreigners, characters, battles, conceptsor values. This tradition comes from old French military schools such as the Ecole Spéciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr. According to an international classification, the École nationale d’administration ranks ninth among higher education institutions in the world, with regard to the performance of their training programmes, based on the number of alumni among the Chief Executive Officers of the 500 leading worldwide companies. Since its creation 60 years ago, the ENA has trained 5600 French senior officials and 2600 foreigners.
