Civil servant (France)

The French Civil Service (French: fonction publique française) is the set of civil servants (fonctionnaires) working for the French government.

Not all employees of the state and public institutions or corporations are civil servants; however, the media often incorrectly equate "government employee" or "employee of a public corporation" with fonctionnaire. For instance, most employees of RATP and SNCF (road and rail transport authorities) are not civil servants. The Civil Service is also sometimes incorrectly referred to as the administration, but, properly speaking, the administration is the compound of public administrations and public administrative establishments, not their employees.

About half of the civil servants are employed in the French public education system.

Most employment positions in the French civil service are open to citizens of the European Union. Others, especially in police and justice, are specifically reserved for nationals, while a minority are open regardless of citizenship.

The Civil Service is divided into:

Technically, fonction publique may also refer to fonction publique militaire, the personnel of military status. They are generally counted apart. There also exist ouvriers d'État - that is, State Workers - for industrial functions.

Civil servants of the State are divided into corps (administration), which may themselves be divided into ranks (grades) (called classes in certain corps). Corps are grouped in 3 categories (formerly 4) named A to C, in decreasing order of educational knowledge theoretically required, A meaning "college graduate". For instance, the corps of professors of the universities is a category A corps divided into 3 classes, in increasing order of seniority: second class (equivalent to an American associate professor), first class (full professor), exceptional class (leading full professor in his area). Generally, to avoid rank inflation, the number of civil servants in the higher ranks (especially "exceptional class") is contrained by a maximal percentage of the total number of civil servants of the corps. Each corps has a set of possible job or task descriptions and may have its own particular statutes.

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