A relation on the competitiveness of the national ports of the Committee of assessment and control of the public policies of the French National Assembly evidences that the state harbour system continues to lose ground regarding the European competitors, so much that to today - precise the document - there is "a huge gap between the volumes enlivened from the French harbour platforms and those that transit through the competing ports". The specific relationship that "the competitive decline of the French harbour ecosystem seems to derive from a series of structural causes of various nature: on the one hand, a limited fluidity due to an insufficiently connected hinterland and to an insufficient development of modal transfer; on the other, a reliability far from satisfactory because of the "memory effect" of the social conflicts past on the reputation of the French ports and a complex normative apparatus, characterized from the length and complexity Therefore - it observes the report - it is probable that such limitations lead to a decrease of attraction and to a deviation of the lasting traffic, sometimes irreversible, towards competitors ports, that currently maintain a considerable advantage".

The data on which this desolate conclusion is based are listed in the report, which explains how between 2005 and 2025, while the total traffic in the four main French ports decreased by -16.2%, in the same period no large European competitor had recorded a negative growth, with Rotterdam that had grown of +24.9%, Antwerp-Bruges of +52.9%, Algeciras of +47.6%, Valencia of +84.3% and Pireo. In 2025 the total traffic of Rotterdam and Antwerp-Bruges represented 1,8 and 1,1 times the total volume enlivened in France from the harbour system Haropa and the ports of Marseille, Dunkerque and Nantes-Saint-Nazaire.

The picture - specifies the relationship - is still more clearly relative to the only segment of the container: in 2025 the harbour system Haropa, with a traffic in the year of 3,2 million teu, occupied only the tenth place in Europe, far from the 13,6 million teu of Antwerp-Bruges. The share of the French ports in the total European traffic has dropped from 18% of 1990 to 12.3% of 2024 and, in the single segment of the container, from 12% to 7.1%. At the level of Northern Range, Haropa and Dunkerque together represent just 11% of the total traffic and 7.8% of the containerized one, against 30% of Rotterdam. The precise relationship that relative to the French portualità, however, the picture is not all negative, with the system Haropa that, in reality, between 2021 and 2025 has increased own quota in the within of the harbour system of the Northern Range that is climbed from 8.0% to 8.8%, while Rotterdam and Hamburg were slightly retracted. A signal of dynamism that the speakers of the report emphasize as an encouraging exception in an otherwise negative picture.

To reverse the course, the speakers propose a package of 40 recommendations organized in six strategic axes, starting from the reorganization of the harbour network for harbour systems, structuring the national strategy around three integrated logistic axes (Senna, North, Mediterranean-Rodano-Saona) and possibly merging the harbour agencies of Bordeaux, La Rochelle and Nantes-Saint-Nazaire in a single atlantic agency. It is then proposed to renew the governance with a multiannual programming law of investments, with the full reinvestment of the revenues generated by the EU ETS marine in the decarbonization of the ports, and with an elongation from five to 10 years of the duration of the strategic projects and the mandates of the general directors of the Grand Port Maritime. It is also recommended to make the operating framework more reliable and smooth, authorizing business continuity plans in case of strikes, simplifying state employment authorizations and securely financing customs scanners.

The fourth proposed strategic axis provides for the strengthening of rail and river links with the hinterland, with the objective declared to double in ten years the modal share of these transports. The fifth proposes to accelerate digital and energy transitions through a unified portuary information system (Port Community System) and support for the electrification infrastructure of the docks (cold ironing). Finally, it aims to support industrial investments, with the placement of "turnkey" industrial sites in port areas to attract traffic.

The Association des Utilisateurs de Transport de Fret (AUTF), the main French association of the loaders, welcomed the report, finding a large part of its analysis, although it denounced that it continues to be evident that some bored requests of the loaders remain, at least for now, without answer. In this regard, the association has remembered that, in the face of debates often centered on infrastructure, handling of the goods or marine transport, the AUTF has proposed a different approach: that of the defence of the interests of goods and end users. The AUTF has emphasized that the performance of a port is not limited in fact to its infrastructures, but they extend to its ability to offer a reliable, smooth, predictable and competitive traffic to the companies that depend on the port.

The AUTF, which had been heard by the speakers who drafted the report, specified that it had submitted several requests: from the strengthening of the railway and river connections, so that the attraction of a port no longer limits itself to the dock but affixes concrete benefits to the surrounding economic regions, to the creation of really useful performance indicators for the users, including an indicator of saturation of the terminals in order to measure concretely the impact of congestion and the blocks on the chains of supply of the companies. Among the requests, also the acceleration of digitization, with interoperable information systems between shipping companies, terminals, customs, carriers and ports, for the real-time tracking of the goods, to the advantage of the shippers, and the recognition and sharing of the economic cost of the harbour malfunctions (congestion, weather events, social disorders) that translate directly into parking costs, stop and overtaken for the enterprises.

This last request, in particular, constitutes the main area of interest of the AUTF that the association has evidenced to be a fundamental question that remains without an operational solution. For several years, in fact, the AUTF supports the principle according to which the costs generated by congestion, blocks or strikes should no longer be supported mainly by the goods and the shippers, but should be distributed equally between all the rings of the marine and harbour chain. The association complained that the parliamentary report, on the other hand, while recognizing the existence of these costs and their impact on competitiveness, does not formulate in this regard any recommendation which foresees neither the automatic suspension of such charges in case of blocking nor their compulsory distribution among the various subjects concerned.

The UFT has emphasized moreover that, analogously, the relationship does not explicitly address the implementation of an official indicator of congestion or harbour saturation able to activate corrective mechanisms, despite the general principle of strengthening the indicators is included in the recommendations of the relationship.