The paper starts from the concept of industrial policies, that has never been completely defined, in order to point out the failures, but also the prejudices concerning the vertical policies; analysing the French history after the 2nd world war and the more recent European experience the author highlights on one side the difficulties of the national states in order to manage vertical policies and on the other side the European narrow-mindedness towards the industrial policy after a first interest for the technological colbertism. The recent French experience with a mixture of instruments (referred to different approaches) seems to be condemned to failure because unable to consider both the limited available resources and the different government levels (European, national, regional) in charge of the various measures of industrial policy. The future of the industrial policy could be found in a complex of political measures not only focused on specific industries or regions, but extended to a more effective improvement of the context in which firms are operating.
