Contribution to the legal study of port concessions.

Summary The adaptation of seaports to the new conditions of international trade cannot be achieved without the involvement of private operators in the management of port activities. This involvement requires that the industrial and commercial activities of ports be entrusted to them through efficient legal arrangements. Among these, port concessions appear to be the legal tools offering a framework for the performance and profitability of economic activities in seaports. However, today, the problem of the legal qualification of these port concessions seems to arise insofar as there is a legal disorder in administrative law. This thesis thus aims to shed light on the issue. Its general introduction first sets out the concept of port concessions and then addresses the objective of this study by focusing on its problematic: can the concession contract in ports be classified in a pre-established legal family and be attached to a pre-existing legal category? In order to answer this question, the first part of this thesis focused on highlighting the diversity of the characteristic elements of port concessions. This identification operation has emphasized the essential and non-essential elements that allow the legal qualification of port concessions. But this theoretical classification can only be judicious and coherent if it is confronted with the constant evolution of the practice of concessionary arrangements made by economic operators in ports. It is to this grid of analysis that the second part of this thesis was delivered. It has, thus, focused on the diversity of the concessive practice in the French and African maritime ports. Also, the concessive arrangements in French ports were examined in comparison with those used in European ports (Antwerp, Rotterdam, Hamburg) and in African ports, particularly in Côte d'Ivoire, Senegal, Cameroon, Algeria and Morocco. This comparative analysis, which is illustrated by professional documents, finally shows that the legal qualification of port concessions, which is the central theme of this thesis, is a perilous exercise. It can only be done on a case-by-case basis, depending on the country and taking into account the combined efforts of doctrine, case law, and legislative and regulatory texts.