Question 12979 — overseas

Summary

Ms. Mereana Reid Arbelot draws the attention of the Minister of Transport to the persistent exclusion of French Polynesia and New Caledonia from the national maritime freight aid system, even though these communities are among the most remote territories and the most exposed to additional logistics costs within the Republic. The national freight aid system, established in order to compensate for the additional structural costs linked to the remoteness and insularity of overseas markets, is governed in particular by Decree No. 2017-1476 of October 16, 2017 relating to freight aid. This system today benefits overseas departments and regions as well as certain overseas communities, but remains inapplicable to French Polynesia and New Caledonia, although located respectively more than 15,700 kilometers and 16,500 kilometers from the metropolis. This situation appears all the more paradoxical since the very objective of freight aid is to correct the most marked geographical handicaps, which are precisely concentrated in the Pacific basin. According to the work of the Competition Authority and several public reports relating to the cost of living overseas, maritime transport costs can represent up to 30% to 40% of the delivered price of the goods. imported into French Polynesia and New Caledonia, compared to around 10% to 15% in the overseas departments and regions of the Atlantic. These additional costs weigh directly on local businesses, by increasing the cost of inputs and raw materials, but also on households, in areas where structural inflation is sustainably higher than that observed in France. Faced with this situation and the absence of any national support for international freight, the Government of French Polynesia recently announced the establishment of a new support system aimed at mitigating the impact of transport costs on consumer prices. As of March 1, 2026, the Country will cover 10% of the CIF value, including the cost, insurance and freight of thirteen essential products imported by sea. This aid, financed exclusively from the local budget, is intended for importers in order to enable an effective reduction in prices for consumers. This initiative illustrates the fact that the Polynesian community alone assumes a financial burden which nevertheless falls, by its nature and its purpose, into national mechanisms for compensating for additional costs linked to remoteness. This difference in treatment between overseas territories, based not on the intensity of geographical constraints but on the sole statutory criterion, is likely to characterize a breach of equality in the face of public responsibilities. It questions the coherence of the national transport policy and support for overseas economic development. It leads, in practice, to burdening Pacific communities and their inhabitants with the cost of geographical isolation that solidarity national is precisely supposed to compensate. The MP therefore wishes to know the Government's intentions regarding the evolution of the legal framework for aid to maritime freight. She asks him about the possibility of extending or adapting this system to French Polynesia and New Caledonia. She also wishes to know whether regulatory or legislative reform is being considered in order to take into account geographical realities, economic and logistical specific to the Pacific communities, with the aim of effectively reestablishing equal treatment between all the overseas territories of the Republic.

Machine translation from French. The official text remains authoritative.

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