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Since the beginning of 2010, the assertion of the public authorities (State and local authorities) in the field of coastal risk management has been substantial. However, the unequal distribution of expertise and the relations between public and private engineering seem to have been insufficiently analysed. While in the case of Charente-Maritime studied here, the local government gained competence in coastal risk management thanks to its expertise, most of the expertise needed to implement these policies is held by private engineering firms, which leads us to formulate the hypothesis of a privatisation of the ‘blue state’.