| Summary: | France, a State with a sovereign tradition, has, for long, considered ports as public goods. As such, they were State property and essential underpinnings for the economic development of the national territory. This conception, even though it was softened by calls to local initiatives through concessions granted to Chambers of Commerce and Industry, led to governance which was out of phase with global reality. This was accentuated by the complete State control on major ports, put in place on the grounds of significant needs for investments to face the development of gigantism and the apparition of containerisation and allowed by the law on Autonomous Ports in 1965. However, with the disappointment of the ports’ commercial results and the generalisation of the privatisation of operational functions in the rest of the world, the French State decided to change its position. Two approaches emerged: the decentralisation of minor ports, process achieved since the 1st of January 2007, and the transfer of the equipments of major seaports to private operators through conventions of terminals, according to the frameworks presented in the law of 4 July 2008 on port reform.
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