The Regulatory Framework of Industrial Risk Policy

Maison Suger is pleased to host the ninth session of the seminar organised by GRETS: "The Regulatory Framework of Industrial Risk Policy. An Investigation into the Work of Government Engineers", with Emmanuel Martinais, Université de Lyon, EVS.

The session will be introduced by Arthur Jobert - EDF R&D.

The seminar will be held in French

Following the AZF disaster in September 2001, a reform of industrial risk policy was launched. This session presents research on how officials at the Ministry of the Environment carried out the work of drafting the laws and regulations for this new industrial risk policy. Focusing on two aspects of this major public policy reform, the study tracks the officials involved—primarily industrial and mining engineers—from the policy’s inception in the early 2000s through its completion in the second half of the 2010s.  

Emmanuel Martinais will demonstrate that the “government of engineers” contributing to the transformation of industrial risk prevention in France deviates from the traditional model of public policy reform. On the one hand, the direction of the reform is shaped less by the general framework of the law than by the details of the normative production of regulations and lower-level texts (circulars, methodological guides, technical notes and instructions, etc.). On the other hand, far from a top-down model in which decisions are conceived at the central level and then implemented locally, the reform is shaped through a multitude of interactions between different levels. As a result, those working on the ground are not limited to implementation activities, but also participate in the forums where public policy directions are discussed and decided. 

Emmanuel Martinais is a researcher at the Rives laboratory of the École nationale des travaux publics de l’État and a member of the Joint Research Unit on Environment, City, and Society. Part of his work focuses on environmental risks and how they are addressed through public policy mechanisms. For the past decade, he has been particularly interested in the aftermath of the 2001 AZF disaster, the legislative and regulatory reforms that this event prompted, and the resulting effects on preventive information. This interest in the management of industrial risks and the government officials responsible for these issues has led him to focus on government reform and the changes experienced in recent years by employees of the Ministry of the Environment and its decentralized agencies.

• Martinais  E., 2025. La contribution des groupes d’intérêt à la production des lois et règlements. L’exemple de la prévention des risques industriels. Politix, 150 (2), 113-141.
• Martinais E., 2024. La fabrique administrative des lois et règlements. Enquête au ministère de l’environnement après la catastrophe d’AZF. Lausanne, Peter Lang, coll. « La fabrique du politique », 388 p.
• Bonnaud L., Martinais E., 2024. Le pouvoir normatif des fonctionnaires. L’exemple de la création du régime d’enregistrement des installations classées pour la protection de l’environnement. Droit et Société, n° 118,  525-548.
• Le Bourhis J.-P., Bonnaud L., Martinais E., 2023. Redessiner les frontières de l’État environnemental en région. Quête de transversalité et contraintes bureaucratiques. Gouvernement et action publique, 12 (1), 119-139.