Maritime space and cross-border space: the Norman ports in the interregional trade between the two sides of the Channel in times of Brexit and Covid
Aziz Bocary TRAORÉ, Université Le Havre Normandie, France
Each year, millions of passengers and goods cross the Channel Sea separating the French and the British coasts (O’Riain, 1991). Maritime vessels are the main cross-channel transportation between France, Great Britain, and Ireland (Joan, 1992). Some Norman ports serve as land bases for cross-Channel ships. In Normandy, five commercial ports provide direct links with their English and Irish counterparts. These relations forge interregional links between the two sides of the Channel thanks to the cross-Channel, as shown by Delphine Blanchard in her Ph.D. dissertation (Blanchard, 2017).
Our data show that, for Norman ports, cross-Channel links represent an essential lever of development, even vital in some cases. In the ports of Caen-Ouistreham, Dieppe, and Cherbourg, cross-Channel traffic represents more than 90% of the port activity. These three ports are regrouped in "Ports of Normandy" in order to build a common ambition of mutualizing the commercial development strategy of the three regional ports to cope with the domination of HAROPA port (merger of the three ports of Le Havre, Rouen and Paris) on the main traffics in Normandy. One of these development levers for “Ports of Normandy” is roll-on / roll-off ships (RO-RO), and Roll-On-Roll-Off-Passenger ships (ROPAX) traffics in the cross-Channel.
In our presentation, we want to highlight the importance of the Norman ports in the interregional trade in the Channel Sea. But today, with geopolitical disruptions due to Brexit (Badiani, 2019) and the socio-health disruptions of COVID-19 (Alamoush et al., 2021), cross-Channel traffic suffered repercussions which are opportunities or threats for the Norman ports. This presentation is based on Aziz Bocary Traoré’s Ph.D. dissertation entitled “regional dynamics and port dynamics: globalization and Norman ports” wherein we analyze the regional integration of ports in Normandy in a context of economic globalization and the differences between the major port and the local ports.
Mots clés : Normandy|Brexit|Covid|Seaports|Cross-Channel traffic
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