France has a complex administrative system consisting of regions, departments, arrondissements, cantons, and municipalities. The country is divided into 26 regions, 22 of which are metropolitan and four are overseas. The regions have no legislative power but impose their own taxes. Departments are represented by two-digit numbers and are administered by a general council. Arrondissements are districts run by officials elected by the president, while cantons serve as constituencies during elections. Communes are the lowest administrative division and are run by a mayor and city council. The French administration is considered one of the most complicated in Europe.
France is located in northwestern Europe and is one of the member countries of the European Union. Its political system consists of different levels of administrative divisions, which include regions, departments, arrondissements, cantons and municipalities. These divisions include not only France, but also other countries that were previously colonized by the French government and are currently considered to be under French territory. For administrative purposes, these countries are called “overseas regions” while France in Europe is called “Metropolitan”.
The French territory is first divided into 26 regions, 22 metropolitan and four overseas. The regions are governed by a regional council of elected members and have no legislative or regulatory power. However, they impose their own taxes, leading them to have sizable budgets to run the country’s decentralized services. The regions are further divided into 100 departments, 96 in Metropolitan and four overseas. The four overseas regions and departments are the same: French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique and Réunion.
French departments are administered by a general council of elected members and are represented by two-digit numbers, which are designated to each department following alphabetical order. These numbers appear in INSEE (Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Démographiques) codes, social security numbers and French postal codes. They are also currently used as the final digits at the end of French vehicle registration numbers.
The departments are made up of 341 arrondissements, or districts, run by officials elected by the president. Unlike regions and departments, however, arrondissements are not legal entities in the eyes of the law. The constituencies are then subdivided into 4,032 cantons which serve as constituencies during elections for the general council of each department.
The cantons are actually made up of 36,781 communes, which is the lowest administrative division in France. Most of these communes, 36,569 of them, belong to metropolitan France while the remaining 212 belong to overseas regions. There is no exact definition of a French commune. Paris, a city with more than 2 million inhabitants, is considered a commune. Likewise, Rochefourchat is a single-member municipality located in the Rhône-Alpes region. A mayor and his city council run a municipality. Despite the disparity in the size of French communes, the powers of those who govern them remain the same. That said, there are three communes – Paris, Marseille and Lyon – which are further divided into 45 municipal arrondissements, each with its own mayor and arrondisement council.
The administrative divisions in the French overseas regions are the same as in metropolitan France. The four overseas regions/departments are divided into 12 arrondissements, which are further subdivided into 153 cantons. These 153 cantons are made up of 212 municipalities. Overseas regions are governed in the same way as metropolitan regions and with the same authority accorded to those in power.
Over the years, the regional and departmental face of France has changed very little. The lower administrative divisions, however, have often merged and separated over time. For example, smaller French communes may merge to form an additional canton to facilitate administrative and political purposes, pool resources, and share common public services. Because of these volatile changes, the French administration is considered one of the most complicated in Europe.
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