After a summer marked by the crisis of the Strait of Hormuz, the opening by China of a first commercial maritime route through the Arctic and extreme climatic episodes that remind us how topical the issues of « water » are, the Council of State today publishes its annual 2026 study on the sea, based on nearly 300 hearings and trips that made it possible to hear the maritime community in all its diversity (central administrations, public institutions, public and private companies, trade union and professional organizations, NGOs, local, national and European elected officials). With this study, the Council of State diagnoses a dispersion of French maritime public policies and formulates 28 concrete proposals, intended for public decision-makers, to give France a real maritime strategy.
The starting point: the need for a real maritime strategy
The summer of 2026 offered an almost continuous illustration of the current maritime issues. In terms of climate and energy, an exceptional heat wave and unprecedented water stress have put coastal infrastructure under tension, up to the massive influx of jellyfish that forced several reactors at the Gravelines nuclear power plant to stop, while an El Niño episode could be one of the most intense measured in a century. On a geopolitical level, the Hormuz Strait crisis and the conflict in Iran have recalled the vulnerability of major maritime crossing points, from Malacca to Bab-el-Mandeb, to strikes targeting salination plants on which some Gulf countries depend. At the same time, China opened its first regular trade link to Europe by the Northern Maritime Route, known as the « Polar Silk Road ».
The episodes of the summer of 2026, of a very different nature, are a visible manifestation of long-term structural issues, to which the study of the Council of State intends to respond precisely. The French maritime space is the second largest in the world by its extension, mainly thanks to overseas territories. It concentrates issues that have become vital. The sea covers more than 70% of the planet. It is home to most of its biodiversity and plays a major role in climate regulation. It also represents a considerable economic burden. Shipping provides more than 80% of the volume of world trade and the blue economy has doubled in value in twenty-five years. At the same time, these areas are subject to increasing pressures: climate change, pollution, geopolitical tensions on straits and disputed areas, rise in maritime crime (narcotro trafficking, illegal fishing, human trafficking).
Faced with this complexity, the study of the Council of State notes that public action suffers from the juxtaposition of sectoral objectives – environmental, economic, industrial, tourist, security – without a clear hierarchy and which is based on an old and thusy legal construction. In the absence of priorities set at the national level, arbitration between competing uses is referred to the local level, facade by facade, project by project. It is this lack of direction that the study proposes to fill. Effective public policy is not the sum of particular interests, but a direction that leads to the implementation of a general interest. The Council of State formulates 28 concrete proposals around 4 issues.
Issue n°1: Define the maritime general interest before declining it
Proposals 1 to 3
Without an explicit definition of what France pursues at sea, no strategy can be truly prioritized. The Council of State proposes the construction of a true doctrine of « maritime power », setting out priorities for not pursuing uncoordinated actions. This doctrine would take the form of a framework document developed with the Government, Parliament and civil society, a « ticolor book », on the model proposed by the 2025 annual study of the Council of State on public action in the long term, or even a five-year guidance law inspired by the Japanese model.
This doctrine must fully integrate overseas territories, which make up most of the national maritime space but remain underrepresented in policies and collective imaginations. Finally, it involves spreading a maritime culture far beyond specialized administrations, so that maritime issues cease to be perceived as a subject reserved for coastal territories only.
Proposal No. 1: Define the general maritime interest pursued and decline it in a genuine integrated maritime strategy. This is the matrix proposal of the whole study: without this prior clarification of the purposes, none of the other proposals can really be articulated to a common direction.
Issues n°2: Ensure the consistency of public action with the general maritime interest in each sector
Proposals 4 to 14
Once the direction is fixed, it is necessary that it irrigates the concrete areas of friction between uses. The study identifies several areas where the confrontation of particular interests must give way to organized conciliation, with a clear principle: replace the absence of arbitration with a framework that explicitly decides between uses.
- Marine protected areas: make their governance based on a multidisciplinary scientific assessment of ecological and socio-economic effects.
- Wind energy in the sea and fishing: organize co-activity rather than mutual exclusion, relying on the feedback already available (Saint-Nazaire, Yeu and Noirmoutier parks) and by making wind farms biodiversity observation tools.
- Industrial and port development: provide the marine environment with its own ecological compensation doctrine (Avoid-Reduce-Compensate sequence), and better mobilize available port land.
- Integration of ports into their hinterland: decline a port strategy by facade and basin, articulated with transport, energy and development policies.
- Support for maritime innovation: leaving a dispersed subsidy logic to favor more structuring tools (public orders, one-stop shop for financing).
- Backtrack and tourist pressure: fully mobilize existing legal tools, secure their financing over time, and regulate recreational uses in the most sensitive areas.
- Fisheries sector: initiate a reflection on the national criteria for the distribution of quotas and the representation of the profession, prepare a reform of the common fisheries policy, and develop aquaculture as a lever for food sovereignty.
Proposal No. 7: Decline the port strategy by facade and basin in order to better integrate French ports into their hinterland. It illustrates in a particularly concrete way the transition from a logic of juxtaposed projects to an assumed hierarchy: giving a clear priority over the long term to the competitiveness of French ports, a condition of their weight compared to the major northern European and Mediterranean ports.
Issues n°3: Governance that lives up to ambition
Proposals 15 to 28
A strategic direction is only worthwhile if it is based on governance capable of carrying it over the long term. The study highlights the interministerial nature of maritime affairs that it is not possible to group together in a single ministry. The Council of State therefore recommends strengthening the coordinating role of the General Secretariat of the Sea under the authority of the Prime Minister, rather than multiplying the structures. Conversely, it advocates stability of existing administrations already consolidated, such as the Directorate-General for Maritime Affairs, Fisheries and Aquaculture.
This management must be based on a greater place given to science in public decision-making. Data on maritime spaces now remain dispersed and insufficiently harmonized between France and overseas, which limits the very ability to evaluate the policies conducted and to objectify the choices. The study proposes the establishment of a national statistical dashboard of maritime areas and activities. It recommends a more systematic integration of scientific research into the design of public policies, as well as maintaining the level of oceanographic research infrastructures, including polar ones, a condition of French scientific sovereignty.
Maritime governance must also take better account of overseas territories, which make up most of the French maritime space but currently remain insufficiently associated with the development of national policies. The study calls for strengthening their participation in interdepartmental work conducted under the aegis of the General Secretariat of the Sea.
Moreover, the landscape now abundant in maritime consultation bodies deserves a reshap. Too numerous and sometimes redundant, they must be rationalized to gain efficiency, while the National Council of the Sea and the Littorals should be more mobilized on the most structuring choices.
Proposal No. 15: Strengthen the SGMer to make it the true interdepartmental facilitator of the State’s maritime policies, under the authority of the Prime Minister. This is the cornerstone of the governance part: without an actor with a real capacity for coordination and arbitration between ministries, the management fixed upstream would remain without armed arms to implement it
Finally, the requirement of strategic direction does not stop at national borders. France is called upon to play a leading role for a more voluntary and coherent European maritime policy, in particular by removing the European Union’s action from its logic of silos between directorates and institutions, and by weighing on the major construction sites in progress (support for the naval industry, protection of seafarers, reform of the common fisheries policy).
At the international level, France must continue its commitment to a cooperative framework – entry into force of the BBNJ (Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction) treaty, a precautionary moratorium on the exploitation of the deep seabed, decarbonization of maritime transport – and strengthen its maritime sovereignty by a triptych presence-artent-cooperation, especially in disputed areas. This means strengthening the fight against maritime crime (drug trafficking, illegal fishing, human trafficking) through increased bilateral and international cooperation and ensuring that a lasting French presence is maintained in the competent international organizations.
Proposal No. 26: Strengthen French maritime sovereignty by relying on presence, understanding and cooperation. This triptych alone summarizes the philosophy of the entire international part: sovereignty is not decreed, it is built by a combination of concrete means (National Navy, surveillance) and active diplomacy.
