ArticleMarch 20265 min read

A strategy to strengthen French maritime power

Published in Marine & Océans

Study Centre SMGM

Summary

As the Conseil d’État devotes its 2026 annual study to the sea and public policy, a look back at Deep Blue’s hearing and at the stakes of French maritime power.

Article translated from French. The translation may contain inaccuracies: only the original version is authoritative. Read the original version

Full text transcribed from the original document.View the original version (PDF)

Heard by the Conseil d’État as part of its 2026 study on the sea, the young university think tank Deep Blue analyses the conditions for a more coherent French maritime power and identifies its main levers for action.

2025 will have marked a turning point in the way public authorities view the ocean. Proclaimed the year of the sea and punctuated by the United Nations Ocean Conference, which concluded with the ratification of the BBNJ agreement, it confirmed the return of maritime affairs to the heart of strategic priorities. By devoting its 2026 annual study to the sea and public policy, the Conseil d’État recognises that the ocean is becoming a revealer of the transformations of contemporary public action.

For several years, France’s highest administrative court has been exploring the transformations of the state around three major challenges: sovereignty, consideration of the user and long-term action. The sea concentrates precisely these tensions. A space of power and protection, the backbone of the great global value chains, it is also the theatre of intensifying climate upheavals.

It is in this context that the university think tank Deep Blue* was heard by the Conseil d’État’s study section. Its approach rests on a simple conviction: France possesses a maritime power that is still insufficiently thought of as a coherent system. At the interface between academia, public decision-makers and new generations, Deep Blue aims to bring out a comprehensive strategic reading of maritime issues.

Behind this contribution lies a clear ambition: to reconcile sovereignty, economic competitiveness and ecological transition, while making public action more operational for territories and citizens alike.

A MARITIME POWER STILL UNFINISHED

With the world’s second-largest maritime domain, France could appear to be a fully assertive ocean power. The reality is more nuanced. The blue economy accounts for only about 1.5% of national GDP, and nearly two-thirds of containers bound for the French market still pass through foreign ports, notably Antwerp, Rotterdam and Hamburg. This logistical dependence reveals an often underestimated structural fragility.

Maritime sovereignty is now played out as much on land as at sea. Winning back port traffic requires modernising infrastructure, but above all transforming the hinterlands. Strengthening rail and river connections to Le Havre and Marseille, structuring multimodal corridors and adapting port capacity to new-generation vessels are less a matter of spatial planning than of strategic choices engaging national economic autonomy.

Research and innovation are a second decisive lever. Protecting the ocean first requires understanding it. Deep Blue argues for strengthening the resources devoted to maritime research, including in the humanities, so as to fully integrate the economic, social and geopolitical dimensions of the sea. In a constrained budgetary context, partially directing the research tax credit towards marine innovation, or developing centres of excellence, particularly overseas, could be a decisive accelerator.

THE TRIPTYCH: SPACE, DIGITAL AND MARITIME

Strategically, maritime sovereignty no longer rests solely on the number of ships deployed but on an overall capacity to know and control maritime spaces. While France has a technologically complete Navy, from nuclear deterrence to the carrier strike group, the immensity of its spaces now calls for a systemic approach. Satellite surveillance, air assets and artificial intelligence are transforming the analysis of maritime flows by enabling the detection of illicit activities, the identification and behavioural recognition of vessels, and the anticipation of risks. Naval power thus fits into a triptych: space, digital and maritime.

Finally, sovereignty also depends on food. With nearly 70% of the seafood consumed in France imported, developing sustainable fisheries and aquaculture appears to be an economic imperative for achieving autonomy in this field.

MAKING THE ECOLOGICAL TRANSITION A STRATEGIC ADVANTAGE

The ocean remains one of the world’s main climate regulators, absorbing a significant share of CO₂ and excess heat. But acidification, sea-level rise and the intensification of extreme events are reminders that this balance is reaching its limits, placing the sea at the heart of climate policy.

Responsible for around 3 to 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions, shipping faces a major industrial transformation. French shipowners have already made significant decarbonisation efforts – fleet energy optimisation, experimentation with alternative fuels, technological investment – in a sector marked by long cycles.

The challenge is not to oppose ecological transition and competitiveness, but to organise their convergence. Deep Blue argues for green maritime savings that would steer private investment towards decarbonised ships, multi-energy ports and emerging solutions, backed by public co-investment. An interministerial blue fund, ring-fenced for 2026-2030, would make it possible to pool public funding to support port modernisation, industrial innovation, research and the protection of critical infrastructure. The ecological transition would thus become a lever for competitiveness and European maritime leadership.

MODERNISING MARITIME LAW

Maritime power does not rest only on infrastructure or naval capabilities, but also on the coherence of the legal framework. Yet French maritime law remains scattered across numerous codes, harming its readability and effectiveness. The creation of a maritime code would be a structuring reform, unifying the rules on the sovereignty of maritime spaces, the safety of navigation, the exploitation of resources and the protection of ecosystems.

Such a codification would strengthen legal certainty for economic actors and assert normative sovereignty, while integrating France’s international commitments more clearly. Modernising maritime law means giving France the legal means of its strategy.

Paradoxically, France remains a great maritime power without a truly shared maritime culture. This distance between society and the sea is one of the major obstacles to the emergence of a lasting strategy. Reintroducing maritime affairs into school curricula, supporting associations and making maritime vocational high schools more attractive would help fill this cultural gap while meeting the recruitment needs of a sector that creates skilled jobs. A “Blue Employment” plan, based on short training courses and targeted attractiveness campaigns, could support this momentum. For maritime power is not decreed solely through investment or industrial strategies; it also rests on a generation able to look towards the sea.

Note on the author

Miali Naja, aged 22, a second-year master’s student in Business Law and Taxation at Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, is a work-study legal trainee at the law firm Fontaine-Avocats. The Deep Blue think tank, founded in 2023 at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne by master’s students, brings together students from the major Parisian grandes écoles and universities around maritime issues. Find out more: www.deepbluefoundation.org