Calls for strike action in several public institutions that feel threatened by reform plans

"How can we claim to respond to the ecological emergency while weakening those who are taking action?", the SNE-FSU union denounced in a statement.

The reason is a project to "revamp the QSAE" (Quasi-Statute of Water Agencies), which has been under discussion for several months between the six water agencies of metropolitan France - each responsible for a large river basin - the government and trade union organizations.

They say they were informed on May 27 that the "one-stop shop" for the civil service had made its agreement on salary increases conditional on the cessation of recruitment under quasi-statutory status from 2028.

The water agencies "are now threatened by the unilateral and uncompensated termination of the status of these agents," warns the National Union of the Environment-FSU.

"France claims to want to make water a national priority. (...) But these ambitions cannot be credible without the women and men who implement them," the unions believe, denouncing a "major contradiction between words and deeds."

The same sentiment is echoed by the collective "Agencies in struggle!" which brings together CGT representatives from the Agency for Ecological Transition (Ademe), the French Office for Biodiversity (OFB), the National Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health Safety (Anses), Public Health France, the Council for Architecture, Urban Planning and the Environment (CAUE), the Center for Studies and Expertise on Risks, the Environment, Mobility and Planning (Cerema), the National Institute of Geographic and Forest Information (IGN) and the Paris Region Institute.

"Since January 2025, the attacks - budgetary, legislative, symbolic - have intensified dangerously against French environmental and health agencies, and more broadly against state operators and leading public institutions," the group emphasizes in a statement.

Thus, the project "aiming to strengthen the local state" plans to bring together locally the agents of Ademe and those of the Regional Directorates for the Environment, Planning and Housing (Dreal), which act under the authority of the regional prefect, which would lead, according to the unions, to an "extinction" of the public establishment.

"We refuse to allow staff to pay, through the deterioration of their working conditions, for the political choices that are stifling public action. We demand respect for the public interest missions of our agencies, as well as the maintenance and strengthening of the resources necessary to accomplish them," the statement concludes.