It's a subsidised route, with the subsidy paid by the local authorities on the Lorient side. Eastern is putting a considerably smaller (and cheaper) aircraft on the route than HOP! had.
The route previously fed into the Air France/HOP! hub in Lyon and offered connections to quite a lot of other destinations. I don't know whether Eastern has any kind of interline agreement with Air France or whether it will effectively only be local traffic from now on.