French Airports Case Study

The competitive environment and the institutional and regulatory framework for airports in France has undergone major changes over the past three decades. While competition and carriers consolidation and the growing importance of low-cost airlines can be observed in the countries we have studied in this book, the institutional changes in France are more unique. The 2005 Law changed the rules on airport ownership and opened it up to private investors, leading to a different ownership structure of the larger French airports today, even though the planned privatization of AdP, the Paris airports, had to be postponed. The regulatory framework of airports has therefore also undergone major changes with the creation of a sectoral regulatory agency ASI, whose powers have been transferred in 2019 to the ART (Transport Regulatory Authority). Both single-till and dual-till regulation is being used. There are difference between the regulation of the large airports (category I &II) and the regulation of state-owned small regional airports, that started to be transferred to local governments since 2004. They are under the supervision of the DGAC, and for local airports (below 100,000 PAX/p.a.) under the supervision of the Prefect, the State’s representative in a region or a department