158 TOURISM LAW IN EUROPE 1.1. Minister of Tourism What is the point of having a minister in charge of this or that sector? Today, the question arises as to the place of the ministries in our central administration. Indeed, the reform of public policies has led to a significant reduction in the number of ministries. Interest for a country to have a clearly identified Minister of Tourism: Most of the newly emerging countries considered that having a full-time Minister of Tourism was a major asset in developing their policy. For example, Mexico, India, China, Israel and New Zealand have a full-fledged Ministry of Tourism. In France, since the appointment of the last government, the term “tourism” has been buried among other sectors of activity in the job title of the Minister or The Secretary of State. This shows that despite the impact of tourism activity on the French economic sector, tourism does not occupy a prominent place in the minds of politicians. There is also a real lack of visibility of the national tourism administration, which can be a serious handicap for a country that holds the first place in terms of international tourist arrivals. Context: Until now, the administration was placed under the authority of the minister in charge of tourism and consisted of central services, services in France and abroad. The reform resulting from the Law of 22 July 2009 abolished the Directorate of Tourism by merging the Directorate of Tourism (DT), the Directorate General of Enterprises (DGE) and the Directorate of Trade, Crafts, Services and Professionals (la direction du commerce, de l’artisanat, des services et des professionnelles) (DCASPL) to create the Directorate General for Competitiveness of Industry and Services (la direction générale de la compétitivité de l’industrie et des services) (DGCIS). The administration of tourism has thus been thoroughly reformed, and the Directorate of Tourism has become a sub-directorate. In this respect, it should be noted that the term “tourism” no longer appears in the title of this central administration: DGE, and part of the competences of the former Directorate of Tourism have been transferred to Atout France, a GIE resulting from the merger of ODIT France and Maison de la France. Although it is an organisation independent of the State, we will study it in this section because of the regalian functions it carries out in place of the former Tourism Directorate. Before the 2009 reform, the sub-directorate for tourism was known as the Directorate for Tourism. It had greater autonomy with an independent budget, a department of strategy, forecasting, evaluation and research or its own new information technology services (now completely shared within the DGE). It had a certain visibility and a distinct interlocutor: the director of tourism.
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