Compliance and enforcement: the Achilles heel of French water policy

This chapter examines the compliance and enforcement issues relating to groundwater policy in France. It is based on a review of existing grey and scientific literature and a series of interviews conducted by the authors with enforcement officers in 16 French counties. The chapter starts with a presentation of the existing regulations governing groundwater abstraction (Section 1), followed by a description of how the law enforcement agencies are organised (Section 2) and how they operate (Section 3). It then describes the infractions observed by regulators and analyses the factors that may explain compliance and non-compliance (Section 4). The problems that limit the effectiveness of enforcement are discussed.