A () is a level of administrative division of France. French are analogous to civil townships and incorporated municipalities, and particularly to the New England towns, in Canada and the United States; in Germany; in Italy; in Spain; or civil parishes in the United Kingdom. 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.

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'.

Characteristics

Number of communes As of 1 January 2025, France comprises approximately 34,000 communes, including 129 overseas communes, reflecting a continuing trend of mergers and occasional separations since the 2010s. 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.

+ Evolution of the number of communes Metropolitan France(1)Overseas France(2) March 186137,510 n/a March 186637,548 n/a 6 March 192137,963 n/a 7 March 192637,981 n/a 8 March 193138,004 n/a 8 March 193638,014 n/a 1 January 194737,983 n/a 10 May 195438,000 n/a 7 March 196237,962 n/a 1 March 196837,708 n/a 1 January 197137,659 n/a 20 February 197536,394 n/a 1 January 197836,382 n/a 1 March 198236,433 211 Metropolitan France(1)Overseas France(2) 1 March 198536,631 211 1 March 199036,551 212 1 January 199936,565 214 1 January 200036,567 214 1 January 200136,564 214 1 January 200236,566 214 1 January 200336,565 214 1 January 200436,569 214 1 January 200536,571 214 1 January 200636,572 214 1 January 200736,570 214 1 January 200836,569 212 1 January 202134,836 212(1) Within the current limits of metropolitan France, which existed between 1860 and 1871 and from 1919 to today.(2) Within the current extent of overseas France, which has remained unchanged since the independence of the New Hebrides in 1980.

Population of a typical commune The median population of metropolitan France's communes at the 1999 census was 380 inhabitants. Again this is a very small number, and here France stands absolutely apart in Europe, with the lowest communes' median population of all the European countries (communes in Switzerland or Rhineland-Palatinate may cover a smaller area, as mentioned above, but they are more populated). This small median population of French communes can be compared with Italy, where the median population of communes in 2001 was 2,343 inhabitants, Belgium (11,265 inhabitants), or even Spain (564 inhabitants).

The median population given here should not hide the fact that there are pronounced differences in size among French communes. As mentioned in the introduction, a commune can be a city of 2 million inhabitants such as Paris, a town of 10,000 inhabitants, or just a hamlet of 10 inhabitants. What the median population tells us is that the vast majority of the French communes only have a few hundred inhabitants, but there are also a small number of communes with much higher populations.

In metropolitan France 57 percent of the 36,683 communes have fewer than 500 inhabitants and, with 4,638,000 inhabitants, these smaller communes constitute just 7.7 percent of the total population. In other words, just 8 percent of the French population live in 57 percent of its communes, whilst 92 percent are concentrated in the remaining 43 percent.

Example: Alsace Alsace, with an area of , and now part of the Région Grand Est, used to be the smallest of the regions of metropolitan France, and still has no fewer than 904 communes. This high number is typical of metropolitan France but is atypical when compared with other European countries. It shows the distinctive nature of the French commune as a geo-political or administrative entity.

With its 904 communes, Alsace has three times as many municipalities as Sweden, which has a much larger territory covering and yet is divided into only 290 municipalities (). Alsace has more than double the total number of municipalities of the Netherlands which, in spite of having a population nine times larger and a land area four times larger than Alsace, is divided into just 390 municipalities ().

Most of the communes in Alsace, along with those in other regions of France, have rejected the central government's calls for mergers and rationalization. By way of contrast, in the German states bordering Alsace, the geo-political and administrative areas have been subject to various re-organizations from the 1960s onward. In the state of Baden-Württemberg, the number of or communities was reduced from 3,378 in 1968 to 1,108 in September 2007. In comparison, the number of communes in Alsace was only reduced from 946 in 1971 (just before the Marcellin law aimed at encouraging French communes to merge with each other was passed, see Current debate section below) to 904 in January 2007. Consequently, the Alsace region—despite having a land area only one-fifth the size and a total population only one-sixth of that of its neighbor Baden-Württemberg—has almost as many municipalities. The small Alsace region has more than double the number of municipalities compared to the large and populous state of North Rhine-Westphalia (396 in September 2007).

Role Despite differences in population, each of the communes of the French Republic possesses a mayor (maire) and a municipal council (conseil municipal), which jointly manage the commune from the municipal hall (mairie), with exactly the same powers no matter the size of the commune. This uniformity of status is a legacy of the French Revolution, which wanted to do away with the local idiosyncrasies and tremendous differences in status that existed in the kingdom of France.

French law makes allowances for the vast differences in commune size in a number of areas of administrative law. The size of the municipal council, the method of electing the municipal council, the maximum allowable pay of the mayor and deputy mayors, and municipal campaign finance limits (among other features) all depend on the population echelon into which a particular commune falls.

Since the PLM Law of 1982, three French communes also have a special status in that they are further divided into municipal arrondissements: these are Paris, Marseille, and Lyon. The municipal arrondissement is the only administrative unit below the commune in the French Republic but exists only in these three communes. These municipal arrondissements are not to be confused with the arrondissements that are subdivisions of French départements: French communes are considered legal entities, whereas municipal arrondissements, by contrast, have no official capacity and no budget of their own.

The rights and obligations of communes are governed by the Code général des collectivités territoriales (CGCT) which replaced the Code des communes (except for personnel matters) with the passage of the law of 21 February 1996 for legislation and decree number 2000-318 of 7 April 2000 for regulations.Legislation Decree

From 1794 to 1977—except for a few months in 1848 and 1870–1871—Paris had no mayor and was thus directly controlled by the departmental prefect. This meant that Paris had less autonomy than certain towns or villages. Even after Paris regained the right to elect its own mayor in 1977, the central government retained control of the Paris police. In all other French communes, the municipal police are under the mayor's supervision.

History French communes were created at the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789–1790.

Kingdom of France

Parishes

Before the revolution, France's lowest level of administrative division was the parish (paroisse), and there were up to 60,000 of them in the kingdom. A parish consisted of a church building, the village, the cultivated land around the village. In the late 18th century, with 25 million inhabitants France was the most populous in Europe. By comparison, England had 6 million inhabitants. French kings ruled proudly over a "realm of 100,000 steeples".

Parishes lacked the municipal structures of post-Revolution communes. Usually, one contained only a building committee (conseil de fabrique), made up of villagers, which managed the buildings of the parish church, the churchyard, and the other numerous church estates and properties, and sometimes also provided help for the poor, or even administered parish hospitals or schools. Since the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts of 1539 by Francis I, the priest in charge of the parish was also required to record baptisms, marriages, and burials. Except for these tasks, villages were left to handle other issues as they pleased. Typically, villagers would gather to decide over a special issue regarding the community, such as agricultural land usage, but there existed no permanent municipal body. In many places, the local feudal lord (seigneur) still had a major influence in the village's affairs, collecting taxes from tenant-villagers and ordering them to work the corvée, controlling which fields were to be used and when, and how much of the harvest should be given to him.

Chartered cities

Additionally, some cities had obtained charters during the Middle Ages, either from the king himself or from local counts or dukes (such as the city of Toulouse chartered by the counts of Toulouse). These cities were made up of several parishes (up to 50 parishes in the case of Paris), and they were usually enclosed by a defensive wall. They had been emancipated from the power of feudal lords in the 12th and 13th centuries, had municipal bodies which administered the city, and bore some resemblance with the communes that the French Revolution would establish except for two key points: these municipal bodies were not democratic; they were usually in the hands of some rich bourgeois families upon whom, over time, nobility had been conferred, so they can be better labeled as oligarchies rather than municipal democracies. there was no uniform status for these chartered cities, each one having its own status and specific organization.