Portrait of graduates : Priscille Merle

A graduate of Sciences Po Lille, graduating from Ernest Hemingway (2008), major in Development and institutional cooperation and of the master's degree in International Relations, Priscille Merle is a reporter for the Interministerial Committee for Industrial Restructuring (CIRI).

Her journey

After graduation, Priscille is recruited by Reporters Without Borders, Africa office.

She continued in January 2009 on an International Volunteering in Administration for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as director of the French Israel-South Institute in Beer Sheva, in the middle of the Negev desert. She was then in charge of several missions including, among others: managing a team, different cultural events, university exchange programs, welcoming French people on site and a cooperation & access project to culture with the Bedouin population.
One month before the end of her VIA, she met an instructing protection officer from the OFPRA (French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons) who shared her experience.

Priscille applied and was recruited in 2011 as a contract employee to deal with the Maghreb, Mashreq, Horn of Africa, Haiti and Armenia areas.
It examines the files of asylum seekers. Daily interviews are carried out in order to understand what led them to submit a file: explanation of their trip, their situation and their history. Priscille assesses on a case-by-case basis whether there are many fears in the event of return to the country to grant them in France refugee status or subsidiary protection within the meaning of the Geneva Convention and the Code of Entry and Residence of strangers.

In June 2013, she passed the exams for secretary of chancellery at Quai d'Orsay. Category B competition allowing him in particular to embark on a consular career. She obtained it and took up her post at the crisis center of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She is in charge of HR for 60 agents who work 24 hours a day to ensure crisis management and the security of French people abroad.

Its leaders quickly advise him to take the category A and A + competitions at Quai d´Orsay.
She returned to PENA in November 2013 (IGPDE) and at the same time prepared for the competitions for secretary and adviser for foreign affairs, manager of the Orient. Contest open to people who speak rare foreign languages like Hebrew.
Priscille encourages people who want to pass the Quai d'Orsay competitions not to neglect category B competitions. They lead, according to her, to exciting professions within the consular channel, with a role of prefect abroad .

In the end, she is eligible for the 3 competitions. First, admitted to the ENA, she will do her pre-re-entry while waiting to take the oral exams for the Quai d'Orsay. She succeeds and becomes a foreign affairs adviser.

In June 2013, she worked for 6 months as editor of the Middle East peace process. Very rewarding position but the fear of not having as many possibilities of functional mobility by choosing a career at Quai d´Orsay ultimately made her join the ENA.

Detached from her position as foreign affairs advisor, she completed her 2 years of schooling. His internships at the ENA were very diverse and varied: Cabinet of the prefect of the Ile-de-France region, Cabinet of the director of the center for tax policy and administration of the OECD and finally the Parliamentary Channel (LCP ). She finds herself at the heart of strategic decisions and her structure managers share her experience.

At the end of the ENA, she chose to work for the Directorate General of the Treasury, which met her expectations for implementing concrete projects while maintaining strong international and European dimensions in her profession.
In January 2018, she was assistant to the head of the office for combating financial crime. For 2 years, she will work on aspects of European and international relations and negotiations as well as national regulation of the policy against money laundering and the financing of terrorism.
In the Treasury, we become, according to her, a specialist in an often very technical subject that we must be able to explain and present in a very clear manner to various interlocutors, both public and private, as well as to our decision-makers to clarify the arbitration. We are quickly leading the way in national, European and international negotiations to bring about reforms in which we believe.

Finally, she applied in March 2020 as rapporteur for the Interministerial Committee for Industrial Restructuring. The CIRI is a unit of the Directorate General of the Treasury made up of 5 rapporteurs and a secretary general. It takes care of companies with more than 400 employees who are experiencing difficulties and for which, once requested at the request of the company, support is offered to get out of the crisis. Two weeks after taking up his post, a boom occurred due to the COVID crisis. The CIRI participates in the concrete implementation of the loan guaranteed by the State. She then developed new technical expertise in corporate finance and corporate law in difficulty and sharpened her negotiation skills in extremely tense circumstances.

Interministerial Committee for Industrial Restructuring (CIRI)

The mission of the Interministerial Industrial Restructuring Committee is to help companies in difficulty to develop and implement solutions to ensure their sustainability and development.

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Find Priscille Merle's profile in the Sciences Po Lille Alumni directory.