Pierre Papon is a professor at the Ecole de Physique et de Chimie in Paris. He was director general of the CNRS from 1982 to 1986, then director of IFREMER (Institut Francaise d'Etude de la Mer) from 1989 to 1995.Like many other European countries, France certainly has a maritime tradition, but its heritage is above all rural and continental. Rare is the Frenchman, citizen or administrator, who considers the mastery of the ocean as a fundamental political stake-- and yet French military, economic and energetic independence as well as scientific and technical progress depend heavily on maritime space.The author makes a case for European maritime policies that will permit counties such as France or Great Britain to really make use of the immense asset that their major coastlines represent.