A bill proposed by lawmakers from the left-wing party La France Insoumise wants to ban recreational and mega yachts fifty meters and longer from entering French ports, using local berths, or navigating territorial waters. The proposal aims to curb greenhouse gas emissions, though it is currently just an early-stage bill and unlikely to pass.
It will be interesting if this keeps on building, the Cote d'Azur has already a restriction of yachts 24 meters and above for anchoring inside the coast. This new proposed bill attacks the healthiest part of the yachting industry of the last decades. Since the start of the noughties the fifty meter plus super yachts industry has flourished, and the South of France does give berths and service to most of these yachts in the Mediterranean.
While restriction is never healthy, the growing size of the industry has become a problem, for the general value of yachting. This proposed bill is set not to pass, but it is known that a cloud can be the start of a building storm. I do agree that some yachts are really too big, and while fifty meters is sort of a nice balance of a yacht being big but not too large, the one hundred meters plus Giga yachts do not really make sense in the yachting part of the equation, beyond impressing for size.
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