French President Emmanuel Macron detailed plans to do away with an elite academic institution that has been a pillar of the country's power establishment for 75 years, replacing it with a more egalitarian version.

In an address to hundreds of ranking civil servants by video conference, Macron spelled out what he said was the need for "radical change" in the training of the top ranks of the civil service – including putting an end to the Ecole Nationale d'Administration, widely known as ENA.

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ENA is to be replaced by a new creation, the Institute for Public Service, with a vastly different approach to recruiting, training and selecting top civil servants.

The plan to do away with the Strasbourg-based school is part of Macron's larger transformation of the public sector, ridden with red tape, to bring more "humanity," "efficiency" and "simplicity."

Macron himself, like most French presidents, is a graduate of ENA, which is the training ground for the nation's most senior civil servants. The most prestigious of French graduate schools, it was created in 1945 by Charles de Gaulle – ironically to democratize access to the senior civil service.

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Macron had first referred to the idea two years ago, as France was shaken by the yellow vest protest movement that demanded economic and social justice.

The reform would include a common learning trunk for all top civil servants to expose them to the realities of today, including secularism, poverty, ecology and scientific discourse.

To placate the yellow vest protesters, whose marches in 2019 severely disrupted the country, Macron traveled France discussing contested issues in what was billed as a "great national debate." It concluded with an April 25 news conference in which he said ENA should be closed because it doesn't resemble French society.