How France let its ports die

Emmanuelle Ducros 08:43, March 23, 2023

This week, in the main cargo ports of France, a strike was declared for 72 hours. More activity from Tuesday to Thursday evening, these are protest actions against the pension reform. These operations called "dead ports" have become routine since the beginning of the social conflict, they are intensifying.

And they are aptly named, not only for what is happening in the context of this social conflict... Port also died for the harm it does to French ports. The France has seven major seaports (Dunkirk, Le Havre, Rouen, Nantes Saint-Nazaire, La Rochelle, Bordeaux, Marseille). They have gradually disappeared from world and even European rankings. In a world dominated by Asian ports, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Hamburg, Bremen, Valencia, they are doing better.

Only one French port is in the world's top 100 container traffic, it is Le Havre, ranked 68th. It's still a shame for a country that has 1000 km of coastline, a dense history of merchant shipping and has the second largest maritime domain in the world.

How do we explain this?

A clue: the World Bank maintains a ranking of the 370 port infrastructures in the world according to the loading and unloading time of ships.

French ports are conspicuous by their inefficiency. The port of Bordeaux is in 228th place, that of Le Havre in 292nd place, Marseille in 315th.

Our ports were underinvested, for a long time, they were old-fashioned, customers had gone elsewhere. It's hard to catch up, a maritime route that is diverted, logistics chains do not change in the blink of an eye

We had tried to straighten the bar

There had been great efforts, including an investment plan in 2018. It was better, at the end of covid, our ports had recovered. In 2021, they had recorded strong growth. In particular the port of Le Havre (HAROPA), 25% more activity. He had invested a lot in his infrastructure, it paid off. But patatras, war in Ukraine and now social movements, a great opportunity sabotaged.

Suffice to say that the traffic that is experiencing shocks because of strikes and blockades is devastating. It's customers who leave and don't come back.

The dockers' strike, a French passion...

Especially in a port world where the CGT is in a dominant position. The French propensity to strike port explains a good part of our setbacks, from the difficulty of modernizing, decarbonizing, to random handling. Everything is subject to conflict.

This is not simply a view of the mind, or a gratuitous denigration of the social struggle. It's part of the worldwide reputation of French ports, they have the easy picket.

I relied for this column on a survey conducted two years ago by the very interesting Journal de la marine marchande, which tells how things are happening elsewhere, in competing ports. There are strikes in Belgian ports. In the Netherlands, they are limited to claims within a company. In Germany, political strikes in ports are prohibited, they are only allowed with regard to the work of dockers. In Spain, strikes have been rare since 2017 and a reform of dockers' hiring procedures...

The result of all this is the waste of our assets. One container out of two destined for France transits... through another European port!