Bruno Retailleau, the Les Républicains candidate for the presidential election, believes that “with AI, we can save 300,000 jobs” in the national and local civil service. He detailed his program on this subject on Thursday, November 12, at studio 104 of the Maison de la Radio et de la Musique, during the franceinfo event day dedicated to public services.
Of these jobs, 150,000 would not be renewed and 150,000 would be “reassigned,” he specifies. He denounces what he calls “the administrating administration” and states: “Today, in France, we have one of the most impoverished civil services.” He also wants to abolish several agencies, including the French Environment and Energy Management Agency (Ademe), whose missions he would entrust to the regions.
Education: comprehensive lower secondary school and salaries
Bruno Retailleau says he is opposed to the comprehensive lower secondary school system. “At age 14, I want to start pre-apprenticeship because we know perfectly well that there are young people who are comfortable with manual intelligence and who are much less comfortable with more abstract teachings,” he declares. He also proposes the introduction of an entrance exam for the 6th grade (first year of lower secondary), intended to select students based on their level.
The candidate wants to increase the salary of early-career teachers by 135 euros per month. He also advocates for the creation of free, autonomous public schools, where the headteacher would choose their teachers. “Together, the team would choose its educational project, there would be a link with the regional education authority,” he specifies.
Justice: sentences and prison places
Regarding justice, Bruno Retailleau proposes abolishing the sentence enforcement judge, responsible for monitoring the execution of sanctions. “What is most shocking is the gap between the sentences faced, the sentences handed down, and the sentences served (…). There is a huge distance,” he explains, before adding: “In France, we have created a right to non-execution of sentences.”
The candidate says he is shocked by “the explosion of crime among minors” and wants to focus on “juvenile justice.” He wishes to build 40,000 additional prison places, advocate for “short prison sentences, of two weeks, three weeks, one month,” and propose a referendum on penal policy. “The sanction must be predictable and certain,” he hammers. To recruit magistrates, he would allocate “a little less than 2 billion.”
Health and prevention
In the field of health, Bruno Retailleau wants to “debureaucratize the hospital.” The hospital head would be a doctor assisted by an administrator. For general practitioners, he intends to simplify their tasks, including through artificial intelligence, in order to reduce the share of administrative tasks. He also wants to allow retired doctors to work again and simplify the procedures in this area.
Finally, he wishes to entrust prevention not to the Health Insurance, but to mutual insurance companies, with a “bonus.” Under this scheme, people who take preventive recommendations into account would benefit from a bonus, meaning they would have less to pay for their supplementary health insurance.
