The new French regional policy seems to be at odds with the past. It encompasses the different dimensions of the public policy: industrial, R&D, innovation, competitiveness policies. Globalization and European integration have swept the old French ‘Colbertist’ approach, and promoted the implementation of an active cluster strategy. The ‘Competitiveness Clusters’, complemented by additional devices (Local Productive Systems, Grappes), are the embodiment of this new regional policy, promoting a bottom-up strategy designed to govern public intervention. The paper details this strategy and assesses its first results.