The article offers an overview of the functioning of France’s competitiveness clusters as a response to the European Union’s Europe 2020 strategy. The role of competitiveness clusters is to strengthen the innovativeness and competitiveness of companies and to reinforce industry-science relations. The paper is based on a literature review and on empirical research using questionnaires and in-depth interviews. The paper reviews Europe 2020 targets for the EU as a whole and for France in particular as well as guidelines to achieve these targets in terms of industry-science cooperation formulated in France’s National Reform Program for the 2011-2014 period. The author also discusses the specific nature of French competitiveness clusters and the results of empirical research on cooperation between companies and public research centers. The main conclusion resulting from the empirical research is that cooperation between these two actors is still fraught with difficulties.