ENVIRONMENT · LOCAL LIFE — WATER, OCEAN AND TERRITORIAL REPRESENTATION

Jean-Baptiste Dussaussois-Larralde, Biarritz’s first deputy mayor, has just joined the board of ANEL, the national association of France’s coastal elected officials. The association has also put him forward to represent it on the National Water Committee. Behind these acronyms and little-known bodies lies something very concrete: Biarritz’s ability to make its voice heard where public policy on water, the ocean and the coastline is shaped.

By Zilbor · October 2026

Some appointments are easy to underestimate, because their titles sound more like the Journal officiel than a chat at the Café de la Grande Plage.

This one, however, is worth a closer look.

Jean-Baptiste Dussaussois-Larralde, Biarritz’s first deputy mayor, is back from the 45th Congress of the Association nationale des élus des littoraux (ANEL), held in the bay of Mont-Saint-Michel, with a new responsibility: he is joining ANEL’s board of directors.

And a second decision could have even more tangible consequences for Biarritz: the association has chosen him to be its representative on the Comité national de l’eau, France’s National Water Committee.

An important administrative caveat: let’s not get ahead of the official record. ANEL has nominated Jean-Baptiste Dussaussois-Larralde to take its seat on the committee (CNE). The appointment still has to be formalised through the ministerial nomination procedure.

So what exactly is ANEL?

The national association of coastal elected officials is hardly new.

Founded in 1978, it now brings together local authorities from mainland France, Corsica and the overseas territories: towns, inter-municipal bodies, départements and regions that share the wonderful, and sometimes daunting, distinction of having the sea as a neighbour.

Its role is twofold.

First, to let elected officials from different coastlines compare experiences. A Normandy village, a Basque Coast resort, a Corsican town or an overseas authority obviously share neither the same geography nor the same constraints. Yet they often face the same questions: coastal retreat, land pressure, tourism, housing, beach management, water quality, urban planning and adaptation to climate change.

But ANEL also has another role, less visible to the public and probably more important: carrying the concerns of coastal areas to the State and to the major national and European bodies.

It acts as a partner to the public authorities on maritime and coastal policy, takes part in debates affecting coastal communities and sits on a number of national bodies.

In other words: ANEL tries to make sure that what mayors see from their beaches reaches Paris.

Jean-Charles Orsucci, a coastal mayor at the head of ANEL

Since September 2025, the association has been chaired by Jean-Charles Orsucci, mayor of Bonifacio.

A president, then, who knows the subject rather well.

Leading a town whose geography, economy and identity are closely bound up with the sea, Jean-Charles Orsucci argues in particular for striking a balance between the essential protection of the coastline and the ability of coastal areas to keep living and developing.

Speaking before the Senate last February as part of an inquiry into the Loi Littoral, France’s coastal protection law, he cited Biarritz, alongside Étretat and Nice, among the coastal areas that contribute to the country’s standing and are directly confronted with the changes to their shoreline.

The ties with Biarritz, then, did not begin at the congress that has just ended.

From Bidart to Biarritz, a relationship begun in the spring

On 20 May, Jean-Charles Orsucci was in the Basque Country for a regional ANEL meeting held in Bidart and devoted to the major challenges facing the southern Atlantic coast.

Coastal retreat, beach management, the maritime public domain, sensitive natural areas, tourist pressure, funding for adaptation: the day read almost like an inventory of Biarritz’s own concerns.

During that visit, Jean-Charles Orsucci was also received at Biarritz City Hall.

A meeting that now takes on a new dimension.

A few months later, Jean-Baptiste Dussaussois-Larralde joins the board of the association chaired by Jean-Charles Orsucci, and ANEL proposes to make him its representative on the National Water Committee.

And the story will soon have a third chapter: in September 2027, Biarritz will host ANEL’s next National Congress.

It would be a mistake, then, to see this as nothing more than a string of formal engagements.

An institutional relationship seems to be gradually taking shape between Biarritz and the association that speaks for coastal communities before the public authorities.

And this is exactly where it gets interesting for Biarritz residents: what can this stronger presence within ANEL actually bring our town?

Water: a very Biarritz issue

Because the seat for which ANEL has just put forward Jean-Baptiste Dussaussois-Larralde is far from trivial for Biarritz.

The National Water Committee is a national consultative body on water policy, attached to the minister responsible for the environment. ANEL has one representative on it.

It is this seat that the association now proposes to entrust to Biarritz’s first deputy mayor.

And here, water is no administrative abstraction.

It is sanitation. It is the networks. It is stormwater. It is bathing water quality. It is the summer strain on infrastructure. And it is, of course, the ocean.

It is also, increasingly, the adaptation of a town built on the edge of the Atlantic to the consequences of climate change.

That is why this seat could make a real difference.

Not because a Biarritz councillor would add another title to his business card, but because Biarritz would gain an additional link between its everyday realities and a national body where the main directions of water policy are debated.

A card for Biarritz to play together

This new role, then, does not come out of nowhere.

It builds on discussions begun a few months earlier with ANEL’s president.

Jean-Baptiste Dussaussois-Larralde now sits on the association’s board in his capacity as Biarritz’s first deputy mayor.

His presence on these bodies should therefore be seen first and foremost as one more opportunity for Biarritz to be heard.

It is now up to him to pass information, experience and proposals gathered at national level in both directions, for the benefit of Biarritz residents.

Because the real value of a national role begins precisely when it stops being honorary.

In 2027, coastal France comes to Biarritz

And the story doesn’t end there.

Avranches has just handed over the baton to Biarritz.

For three days, elected officials from mainland and overseas coastlines, State representatives, experts and players from the maritime and coastal world will gather here, in our town.

It will naturally be an opportunity to show what Biarritz is doing.

But perhaps even more to show what it is trying to solve.

Water quality, sewerage networks, beaches, erosion, housing, tourist pressure, sharing public space, water sports, protecting the ocean: we are hardly short of subjects.

This congress could therefore become something more than just another institutional event.

It could be a chance to measure Biarritz’s challenges against solutions tried elsewhere, to bring the best specialists on these issues to our town and to put some of our own files at the heart of a national discussion.

Provided, of course, that we don’t wait until September 2027 to start thinking about it.

There is nearly a year left to build a congress that is not only held in Biarritz, but is also useful to Biarritz.

Jean-Baptiste Dussaussois-Larralde has just earned a seat at ANEL’s table.

Next September, that table is coming to us.

Zilbor
zilbor@pm.me