FARNET
Fisheries Areas Network
Country Factsheet
The main challenges that CLLD will address in France’s fisheries areas in the coming years include a relatively poor integration of fishing communities into general territorial development, and difficulties to attract labour to the profession, resulting in the aging of the workforce. The 23 French FLAGs are seen as a tool to help the sector become more attractive, and to create economic opportunities through better investment conditions, better synergies among fisheries and aquaculture activities, increased added-value of fisheries and aquaculture products, and new ways of doing business.
Given that most inland fisheries areas are eligible for LEADER funding in France, EMFF CLLD focuses on coastal areas and, with the exception of the Pays de la Loire, all coastal regions in Metropolitan France are implementing CLLD. Two of its overseas territories, Guadeloupe and Saint Martin are also implementing CLLD.
The fisheries industry in France is an important sector both for the economy and for regional development, accounting for some 28 902 jobs (17 731 FTEs) in 2013. The fishing activity is relatively well-distributed along coastline with 42% of French fishing vessels operating in the Atlantic, 37% in overseas territories and 21% in the Mediterranean, although there are some regional concentrations, for example in Brittany which accounts for a quarter of the volume of French fisheries production. Shellfish farming is also an important component of France’s fisheries sector, in particular in Aquitaine-Limousin-Poitou-Charentes, Normandy and Brittany. While employment in fishing decreased by 21% (from 9 058 to 7 150 FTEs) from 2009 to 2013, employment in aquaculture grew to 10 581 FTEs.
Contact details of the managing authority can be found here.
More information about national EMFF programmes can be found here.
In the previous programming period, France had a total of 11 FLAGs. They were relatively evenly distributed along the whole French coastline, covering areas both in the North and the South, and Atlantic, Mediterranean and the Channel. All areas included protected or environmentally managed areas (9 of which Marine Natura 2000 sites) and offered significant environmental and cultural resources that could be mobilized for territorial development based on coastal and marine activities.
The main achievements of Axis 4 were as follows[1]:
[1] Evaluation de l’axe 4 du Fonds Européen pour la Pêche, Synthèse, Février 2013
The main challenges that Community-Led Local Development will have to address in France’s fisheries areas in the coming years are related to structural issues that have been observed over the past two decades, in particular:
As a consequence, FLAGs are seen as a tool to help the sector become more attractive and to create economic opportunities through better investment conditions, better synergies among fisheries and aquaculture activities, increased added-value of fisheries and aquaculture products and new ways of doing business. The following objectives, in particular, have been laid out for CLLD in the French EMFF Operational Programme:
France dedicates 5% of its EMFF fisheries budget to CLLD, up from just 2.6% of the EFF in the 2007-2013 period. FLAGs will benefit from increased budgets (on average €1.8M per FLAG for the current programming period, compared to €1M in the previous period).
Multi-fund CLLD in France
Calls for Local Action Groups funded by the different European Structural and Investment funds were organized separately in France. However, coordination between CLLD groups from different funds is encouraged; for example, EMFF and EAFRD can fund CLLD strategies in the same territory as long as the strategies have been developed in complementarity. In practice there are a number of FLAGs which are managed by an organization (usually a Pays) that also manages a LEADER LAG.
France launched its National Network in June 2018, hiring one full-time person to run networking and other support activities for the FLAGs. These include the collection and dissemination of information on the FLAGs and local projects selected; facilitating the exchange of good practice; the organization of annual conferences and thematic meetings; and the promotion of CLLD through a newsletter and contact with industry players and the relevant media. It has a budget of €420 000. The NN’s website is https://www.dlalfeamp.fr/.
Click here for the National Network contact details.
Twenty-three FLAGs have had their local development strategies approved in seven different regions: Hauts de France (2), Normandy (2), Brittany (8), Nouvelle Aquitaine (4), Occitanie (4), Provence-Alps-Côte-d’Azure (2) and Corsica (1). This ensures a fairly good coverage of the French coastline, including the Atlantic, the Mediterranean and the Channel.
For the EMFF funding period, 80 cooperation projects were reported by the managing authority. These ranged from cooperation projects among neighbouring FLAGs, such as one to promote line-caught fish in Brittany, to projects with international partners as far afield as Australia (around the management of red-lobster stocks) and Japan (around the ikejime technique).
For information on how cooperation was programmed and organised in France, click here.
| Code | Name | Region | Surface area (km²) | Population | Population density (per km²) | Employment in fisheries* |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR201 | Opale Coast FLAG | Hauts-de-France |
115 | 76518 | 667 | 3000 |
| FR202 | Three Estuaries FLAG | Hauts-de-France |
421 | 65382 | 155 | 440 |
| FR203 | Fécamp FLAG | 215 | 40000 | 186 | 290 | |
| FR204 | West Normandy FLAG | Normandy |
1650 | 369811 | 224 | 3500 |
| FR205 | Côte d’Emeraude – Rance – Baie du Mont Saint-Michel FLAG | Brittany |
1611 | 230819 | 143 | 1242 |
| FR206 | Saint-Brieuc FLAG | Brittany |
1165 | 200000 | 170 | 833 |
| FR207 | Trégor & Guingamp FLAG | Britany |
2150 | 206924 | 95 | 550 |
| FR208 | Morlaix FLAG | Brittany |
1331 | 129350 | 97 | 617 |
| FR209 | Brest FLAG | Brittany |
1678 | 390977 | 223 | 739 |
| FR210 | Cornouaille FLAG | Brittany |
2484 | 350000 | 140 | 4900 |
| FR211 | Lorient FLAG | Brittany |
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| FR212 | Auray & Vannes FLAG | Brittany |
2190 | 304752 | 139 | 1448 |
| FR213 | La Rochelle FLAG | Nouvelle-Aquitaine |
409 | 183976 | 450 | 917 |
| FR214 | Marennes Oléron FLAG | Nouvelle-Aquitaine |
590 | 65165 | 110 | 4400 |
| FR215 | Arcachon FLAG | Nouvelle-Aquitaine |
1494 | 146601 | 98 | 6100 |
| FR216 | Basque Coast FLAG | Nouvelle-Aquitaine |
1568 | 317576 | 202 | 270 |
| FR217 | Mediterranean Pyrenees FLAG | Occitanie |
250 | 68118 | 268 | 50 |
| FR218 | Aude FLAG | Occitanie |
1102 | 149923 | 136 | 125 |
| FR219 | Thau FLAG | Occitanie |
470 | 150635 | 320 | 2500 |
| FR220 | Camargue FLAG | Occitanie |
816 | 140000 | 172 | 375 |
| FR221 | Calanques Islands FLAG | Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur |
610 | 253170 | 415 | 544 |
| FR222 | Esterel Côte d’Azur FLAG | Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur |
442 | 267627 | 605 | 75 |
| FR223 | Corsica FLAG | Corsica |
3695 | 241525 | 99 | 425 |