Home > Maritime Economy > Maritime Europe and France

Maritime Europe and France

in the European Maritime Cluster

Peninsular Europe is a continent facing the sea

The coastline of the European Union (EU) extends over 68,000 km, three times longer than the United States coast.

Nearly half the population of the Union live less than 50 km from the sea.

The maritime regions generate more than 40% of Europe’s GDP.

A competitive European maritime industry

The European Union is the number one maritime economic power in the world. It is particularly strong in sea transport, shipbuilding methods and offshore methods, coastal tourism and marine energy generation.

Nearly 90% of the EU’s external trade and more than 40% of its domestic trade is transported by sea.

The EU has 40% of the world’s fleet and unquestionably dominates the maritime sector.

Shipbuilding and offshore, with their state-of-the-art technology, continue to focus on the production and design of high value-added units.

Blue Growth

From December 2010 to August 2012, the European Commission worked on the "Blue Growth" report to identify levers for developing the "blue economy". This report takes account of previous work (Blue Book ...) and initiatives in progress (Atlantic strategy ...). This study tells us that 5.4 million people work in the European maritime sector and generate added value of 495 billion euros. By 2020 there will be 7 billion people working in the sector.

France in the European Maritime Cluster

Moving beyond its present configuration as a confederation of national clusters, the European Network of Maritime Clusters (ENMC), set up in Paris in November 2005 by ten European maritime organisations with France holding the presidency, is developing a structure that will enable it to play an important role at European level and drive home the message of how important the maritime sector is (see next page).

(1) Figures updated by the national body of the country concerned (2) 2010 figures updated by the national body of the country concerned
(3) Source: Policy Research, compilation of data from 2007 for the maritime perimeter defined by the CMF, thus excluding data on coastal tourism and inland waterway transport.
The data are not entirely consistent with our figures. They appear to exclude research and maritime related services such as finance and insurance

 

The French maritime industries in Europe: how the sectors rank on the European podium

haut de page