The () is a level of administrative division in the French Republic. French are analogous to civil townships and incorporated municipalities in the United States and Canada, in Germany, in Italy, or in Spain. The UK equivalent are civil parishes. are based on historical geographic communities or villages and are vested with significant powers to manage the populations and land of the geographic area covered. The are the fourth-level administrative divisions of France.
vary widely in size and area, from large sprawling cities with millions of inhabitants like Paris, to small hamlets with only a handful of inhabitants. typically are based on pre-existing villages and facilitate local governance. All have names, but not all named geographic areas or groups of people residing together are ( or ), the difference residing in the lack of administrative powers. Except for the municipal arrondissements of its largest cities, the are the lowest level of administrative division in France and are governed by elected officials including a mayor () and a municipal council (). They have extensive autonomous powers to implement national policy.
Terminology
A is the smallest and oldest administrative division in France. "Commune" in English has a historical association with socialist and collectivist political movements and philosophies. This association arises in part from the rising of the Paris Commune (1871) which could have more felicitously been called, in English, "the rising of the City of Paris". There is nothing intrinsically different between "town" in English and in French.
The French word appeared in the 12th century, from Medieval Latin , for a large gathering of people sharing a common life; from Latin , 'things held in common'.
Number of communes
As of January 2021, there were 35,083 communes in France, of which 34,836 in metropolitan France, 129 in the overseas departments and 83 in the overseas collectivities and New Caledonia. This is a considerably higher total than that of any other European country, because French communes still largely reflect the division of France into villages or parishes at the time of the French Revolution.
The whole territory of the French Republic is divided into communes; even uninhabited mountains or rain forests are dependent on a commune for their administration. This is unlike some other countries, such as the United States, where unincorporated areas directly governed by a county or a higher authority can be found. There are only a few exceptions: COM (collectivité d'outre-mer, i.e., overseas collectivity) of Saint-Martin (33,102 inhabitants). It was previously a commune inside the Guadeloupe . The commune structure was abolished when Saint-Martin became an overseas collectivity on 22 February 2007. COM of Wallis and Futuna (14,944 inhabitants), which still is divided according to the three traditional chiefdoms. COM of Saint Barthélemy (6,852 inhabitants). It was previously a commune inside the Guadeloupe region. The commune structure was abolished when Saint-Barthélemy became an overseas collectivity on 22 February 2007.
Furthermore, two regions without permanent habitation have no communes: TOM (territoire d'outre-mer, i.e., overseas territory) of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands (no permanent population, about 200 resident scientists, soldiers and meteorologists) Clipperton Island in the Pacific Ocean (uninhabited)
Area of a typical commune
In metropolitan France, the average area of a commune in 2004 was . The median area of metropolitan France's communes at the 1999 census was even smaller, at . The median area gives a better sense of the size of a typical mainland France commune than the average area, since the average includes some very large communes.
In Italy, the median area of communes (comuni) is ; in Belgium it is ; in Spain it is ; and in Germany, the majority of Länder have communes (Gemeinden) with a median area above . Switzerland and the Länder of Rhineland-Palatinate, Schleswig-Holstein, and Thuringia in Germany were the only places in Europe where the communes had a smaller median area than in France.
The communes of France's overseas départements such as Réunion and French Guiana are large by French standards. They usually group into the same commune several villages or towns, often with sizeable distances among them. In Réunion, demographic expansion and sprawling urbanization have resulted in the administrative splitting of some communes.