FRANCE | LAURENCE JÉGOUZO 169 2. LOCAL AND REGIONAL AUTHORITIES AND TOURISM Tourism is a cross-cutting administrative field: no local authority has exclusive powers. The various reforms linked to decentralisation have never modified this concept, according to which all local authorities contribute to the development of tourism, since Article L. 111-1 of the French Tourism Code specifies: “the State, the regions, the departments and the municipalities are competent in the field of tourism and exercise these competences in cooperation and in a coordinated manner”. If the principle is laid down in the texts, the practice is quite different and we can only note that each territorial level acts most often individually and that an overall policy is difficult to implement. The reform of the territorial authorities does not bring any major change on this point. Nevertheless, the region retains a dominant position even if it is not the lead partner in the tourism sector (2.1.). The department plays an essential role in the development of rural tourism and in the marketing of tourism products (2.2.). Law of 23 December 1992: The legislator has organised competing and complementary competences. The different territorial levels can pool their competences in order to conduct coherent tourism policies and establish the necessary collaboration between the actors of the public and private sectors involved in the field of tourism. This issue has always been complex due to the diversity of territories (coastal, mountain, rural, urban) and the transversality of tourism which affects other sectors of competence exercised by territorial authorities such as town planning, the economy, social affairs and regional development. It is therefore difficult to adopt a single system that applies uniformly to all local authorities. Moreover, the problems are different depending on whether or not the area is a tourist area4. In fact, as the competences are not clearly defined, we can only observe that they are intertwined, which often appears complex and not very economical for public finances. Reform of 2010: The reform of the territorial authorities resulting from the Law of 16 December 20105 has had a rather relative influence on tourism. However, the thresholds of population variation linked to tourism could be taken into 4 Jégouzo, L., “Les collectivités territoriales et le tourisme: faut-il modifier la répartition des compétences”, Semaine juridique sept. 2009; Mariller, R. and Sevino, A., “Offices de tourisme, comités départementaux et comités régionaux de tourism”, AJDA 2011, p. 1988 5 Law no. 2010-1563 of 16 Dec. 2010, in OJ No. 292 of 17 Dec. 2010 (corrigendum in OJ No. 293 of 18 Dec. 2010).
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