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While foreign policy has traditionally been the subject of white papers in the United Kingdom, this was not the case in France until the summer of 2008. The publication of the White Paper “La France et l’Europe dans le monde” has put foreign policy on a par with other public policies, so that it can also be subject to programming. This is the result of a medium-term process aimed at adapting the diplomatic service to globalisation. The foreign ministers Alain Juppé and Hubert Védrine gave during the 2000’s a decisive impetus to this process. The White Paper attempts to reconcile two different policy approaches, one based upon the notion of security, and the other on the recognition of a transnational view of external relations which entails an extensive overhaul of cultural machinery. An examination of the reforms of the past decade (1998-2008) and the reasons for them raises the issue of the possible medium-term privatisation of whole swathes of external policy. The White Paper sidesteps this debate.