merchant navy officer

Today, French shipowners are hiring more and more officers on the territory, due to the increase in world trade and the political will for sovereignty of our means of transport. Frédéric Moncany, President of the National Maritime School (ENSM) states that the maritime sector is recruiting new officers: “Until then we had promotions of merchant navy officers which were around 180 to 200 per year. Today, we have the will, under strong political impetus, to double the number of officers trained in our schools by 2027.”

The President of the Republic himself recalled this objective at the conference on the economy of the sea in Nice in September 2021, which could help “make France a great maritime power again”. Only, you also have to maintain a pool of recruits because, if the job allows you to see the country, you also have to know how to take to the open sea. As Frédéric Moncany reminds us, “it’s a profession of commitment: a job as a sailor requires you to leave home and spend weeks at sea. Between the profile of those who return and those who stay in the profession, there are often some disappointments. You really need extremely motivated people to do this wonderful job.”

This profession of passion and future, which one enters after five and a half years of training at the École nationale supérieure maritime, is all the more sought after because the maritime sector is a key sector: 90% of the goods transported in the world travel by the sea. “The maritimization of the world is an inescapable fact, and we will need more and more people who work in, for and on the sea. It is now a job where people are well paid, people are sought after and careers are attractive.” notes Frédéric Moncany, president of the National Maritime School. It is also attracting more and more women, although of the 2,900 officers in the French merchant navy, the overwhelming majority are still men.