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. In the north, cities tended to be administered by
échevins (from an old Germanic word meaning judge), while in the south, cities tended to be administered by
consuls (in a clear reference to Roman antiquity), but
Bordeaux was administered by
jurats (etymologically meaning "sworn men") and Toulouse by
capitouls ("men of the chapter"). Usually, there was no mayor in the modern sense; all the
échevins or
consuls were on equal footing, and rendered decisions collegially. However, for certain purposes, there was one
échevin or
consul ranking above the others, a sort of mayor, although not with the same authority and executive powers as a modern mayor. This "mayor" was called
provost of the merchants (
prévôt des marchands) in Paris and Lyon;
maire in Marseille, Bordeaux,
Rouen,
Orléans,
Bayonne and many other cities and towns;
mayeur in
Lille;
premier capitoul in Toulouse;
viguier in
Montpellier;
premier consul in many towns of southern France;
prêteur royal in
Strasbourg;
maître échevin in
Metz;
maire royal in
Nancy; or
prévôt in
Valenciennes.
French Revolution On 14 July 1789, at the end of the afternoon, following the
storming of the Bastille, the provost of the merchants of Paris,
Jacques de Flesselles was shot by the crowd on the steps of Paris City Hall. Although in the Middle Ages the provosts of the merchants symbolized the independence of Paris and even had openly rebelled against King
Charles V, their office had been suppressed by the king, then reinstated but with strict control from the king, and so they had ended up being viewed by the people as yet another representative of the king, no longer the embodiment of a free municipality. Following that event, a
"commune" of Paris was immediately set up to replace the old medieval chartered city of Paris, and a municipal guard was established to protect Paris against any attempt made by King
Louis XVI to quell the ongoing revolution. Several other cities of France quickly followed suit, and communes arose everywhere, each with their municipal guard. On 14 December 1789, the
National Assembly (
Assemblée Nationale) passed a law creating the commune, designed to be the lowest level of administrative division in France, thus endorsing these independently created communes, but also creating communes of its own. In this area as in many others, the work of the National Assembly was, properly speaking, revolutionary: not content with transforming all the chartered cities and towns into communes, the National Assembly also decided to turn all the village parishes into full-status communes. The Revolutionaries were inspired by
Cartesian ideas as well as by the
philosophy of the Enlightenment. They wanted to do away with all the peculiarities of the past and establish a perfect society, in which all and everything should be equal and set up according to reason, rather than by tradition or conservatism. Thus, they set out to establish administrative divisions that would be uniform across the country: the whole of France would be divided into
départements, themselves divided into arrondissements, themselves divided into cantons, themselves divided into communes, no exceptions. All of these communes would have equal status, they would all have a mayor at their head and a municipal council elected by the inhabitants of the commune. This was a real revolution for the thousands of villages that never had experienced organized municipal life before. A communal house had to be built in each of these villages, which would house the meetings of the municipal council as well as the administration of the commune. Some in the National Assembly were opposed to such a fragmentation of France into thousands of communes, but eventually
Mirabeau and his ideas of one commune for each parish prevailed. On 20 September 1792, the recording of births, marriages, and deaths also was withdrawn as a responsibility of the priests of the parishes and handed to the mayors. Civil marriages were established and started to be performed in the
mairie with a ceremony not unlike the traditional one, with the mayor replacing the priest, and the name of the law replacing the name of God ("
Au nom de la loi, je vous déclare unis par les liens du mariage." – "In the name of the law, I declare you united by the bonds of marriage."). Priests were forced to surrender their centuries-old baptism, marriage, and burial books, which were deposited in the
mairies. These abrupt changes profoundly alienated devout Catholics, and France soon was plunged into the throes of
civil war, with the fervently religious regions of western France at its center. It would take
Napoleon I to re-establish peace in France, stabilize the new administrative system, and make it generally accepted by the population. Napoleon also abolished the election of the municipal councils, which now were chosen by the
prefect, the local representative of the central government.
Trends after the French Revolution Today, French communes are still very much the same in their general principles as those that were established at the beginning of the Revolution. The biggest changes occurred in 1831, when the French Parliament re-established the principle of the election of municipal councils, and in 1837 when French communes were given legal "personality", being now considered
legal entities with legal capacity. The
Jacobin revolutionaries were afraid of independent local powers, which they saw as conservative and opposed to the revolution, and so they favored a powerful central state. Therefore, when they created the communes, they deprived them of any legal "personality" (as they did with the
départements), with only the central state having legal "personality." By 1837 that situation was judged impractical, as mayors and municipal councils could not be parties in courts. The consequence of the change, however, was that tens of thousands of villages which had never had legal "personality" (contrary to the chartered cities) suddenly became legal entities for the first time in their history. This is still the case today. During the revolution, approximately 41,000 communes were created, on territory corresponding to the limits of modern-day France (the 41,000 figure includes the communes of the departments of
Savoie,
Haute-Savoie and
Alpes-Maritimes which were annexed in 1795, but does not include the departments of modern-day
Belgium and
Germany west of the
Rhine, which were part of France between 1795 and 1815). This was fewer than the 60,000 parishes that existed before the revolution (in cities and towns, parishes were merged into one single commune; in the countryside, some very small parishes were merged with bigger ones), but 41,000 was still a considerable number, without any comparison in the world at the time, except in the empire of
China (but there, only county level and above had any permanent administration). Since then, tremendous changes have affected France, as they have the rest of Europe: the
Industrial Revolution, two
world wars, and the
rural exodus have all depopulated the countryside and increased the size of cities. French administrative divisions, however, have remained extremely rigid and unchanged. Today about 90 percent of communes and departments are exactly the same as those designed at the time of the French Revolution more than 200 years ago, with the same limits. Countless rural communes that had hundreds of inhabitants at the time of the French Revolution now have only a hundred inhabitants or fewer. On the other hand, cities and towns have grown so much that their urbanized area is now extending far beyond the limits of their commune which were set at the time of the revolution. The most extreme example of this is Paris, where the urbanized area sprawls over 396 communes. Paris in fact was one of the very few communes of France whose limits were extended to take into account the expansion of the urbanized area. The new, larger, commune of Paris was set up under the oversight of Emperor
Napoléon III in 1859, but after 1859 the limits of Paris rigidified. Unlike most other European countries, which stringently merged their communes to better reflect modern-day densities of population (such as Germany and Italy around 1970), dramatically decreasing the number of communes in the processthe of
West Germany were decreased from 24,400 to 8,400 in the space of a few yearsFrance only carried out mergers at the margin, and those were mostly carried out during the 19th century. From 41,000 communes at the time of the French Revolution, the number decreased to 37,963 in 1921, to 36,569 in 2008 (in metropolitan France). Thus, in Europe, only Switzerland has as high a density of
communes as France, and even there an extensive merger movement has started in the last 10 years. To better grasp the staggering number of communes in France, two comparisons can be made: First, of the original 15 member states of the
European Union there are approximately 75,000 communes; France alone, which comprises 16 percent of the population of the EU-15, had nearly half of its communes. Second, the
United States, with a territory fourteen times larger than that of the French Republic, and nearly five times its population, had 35,937 incorporated
municipalities and
townships at the 2002 Census of Governments, fewer than that of the French Republic. The number of
barangays in the Philippines,
villages of Indonesia, and
muban in Thailand also have a higher number than the French communes.
Communes nouvelles There have long been calls in France for large-scale mergers of communes, including from prominent voices such as the president of the
Cour des comptes (the national audit office). In 1971, the
Marcellin law offered financial incentives to encourage voluntary mergers, but had limited success—only about 1,300 communes agreed to merge. Many rural communes with small populations struggle to provide basic services such as running water, garbage collection, and road maintenance. Mergers remain difficult to achieve. One reason is that they reduce the number of elected positions, which can make them unpopular with local politicians. In some cases, residents are reluctant to let their local services be managed by officials based in another village, especially if they feel their specific needs may not be well understood. In December 2010, the law n° 2010-1563 created the legal framework for the
communes nouvelles ("new communes"). A
commune nouvelle can be created when several communes merge, either at the request of their municipal councils or at the initiative of the
prefect. The new commune may choose to establish
communes déléguées ("delegated communes") to preserve some local representation through a delegated mayor and council. Between 2012 and 2021, around 820
communes nouvelles were created, replacing about 2,550 former communes. The trend has continued in recent years. As of 1 January 2024, a total of 1,078 communes nouvelles had been created since 2010, replacing more than 3,000 former communes. In 2024 alone, 46 communes nouvelles were created, formed from the merger of 110 existing communes. In rare cases, a few communes that had previously merged chose to regain their independence—such as four communes in the
Cantal department in 2024—following local referendums and prefectural approval.
Intercommunality The expression "intercommunality" (
intercommunalité) denotes several forms of cooperation between communes. Such cooperation first made its appearance at the end of the 19th century in the form of a law on 22 March 1890, which provided for the establishment of single-purpose intercommunal associations. French lawmakers have long been aware of the inadequacy of the communal structure inherited from the
French Revolution for dealing with a number of practical matters. The so-called
Chevènement law of 12 July 1999 is a relatively recent and thoroughgoing measure aimed at strengthening and simplifying this principle. In recent years it has become increasingly common for communes to band together in intercommunal
consortia for the provision of such services as refuse collection and water supply. Suburban communes often team up with the city at the core of their urban area to form a community charged with managing public transport or even administering the collection of local taxes. The Chevènement law tidied up all these practices, abolishing some structures and creating new ones. In addition, it offered central government finance aimed at encouraging further communes to join in intercommunal structures. Unlike the only partially successful statute enacted in 1966 and enabling urban communes to form urban communities or the more marked failure of the
Marcellin law of 1971, the Chevènement law met with a large measure of success, so that a majority of French communes are now involved in intercommunal structures. There are two types of these structures: • Those without fiscal power, the loosest form of intercommunality. Mainly in this category are the traditional syndicates of communes. Communes gather and contribute financially to the syndicate, but the syndicate cannot levy its own taxes. Communes can leave the syndicate at any time. Syndicates can be set up for a particular purpose or to deal with several simultaneous matters. These structures have been left untouched by the Chevènement law, and they are on the decline. • Structures with fiscal power. This is what the Chevènement law was concerned with, and it distinguished three structures with fiscal power: • the community of communes (), aimed primarily at rural communes; • the community of agglomeration (), aimed at towns and middle-sized cities and their suburbs; • the urban community (
communauté urbaine), aimed at larger cities and their suburbs. • the metropolis (
métropole), established in 2014, aimed at the largest cities and their suburbs. :These three structures are given varying levels of fiscal power, with the community of agglomeration and the urban community having the most fiscal power, levying the local tax on corporations (
taxe professionnelle) in their own name instead of those of the communes, and with the same level of taxation across the communes of the community. The communities must also manage some services previously performed by the communes, such as garbage collection or transport, but the law also makes it mandatory for the communities to manage other areas such as economic planning and development, housing projects, or environment protection. Communities of communes are required to manage the fewest areas, leaving the communes more autonomous, while urban communities are required to manage most matters, leaving the communes within them with less autonomy.
Allocation of government money In exchange for the creation of a community, the government allocates money to them based on their population, thus providing an incentive for communes to team up and form communities. Communities of communes are given the least money per inhabitant, whereas urban communities are given the most money per inhabitant, thus pushing communes to form more integrated communities where they have fewer powers, which they might otherwise have been loath to do if it were not for government money. The Chevènement law has been extremely successful in the sense that a majority of French communes now have joined the new intercommunal structures. On 1 January 2007, there were 2,573 such communities in metropolitan France (including five syndicats d'agglomération nouvelle, a category currently being phased out), made up of 33,327 communes (91.1 percent of all the communes of metropolitan France), and 52.86 million inhabitants, i.e., 86.7 percent of the population of metropolitan France. In urban areas, the new intercommunal structures are much more a reality, being created by local decision-makers out of genuine belief in the worth of working together. However, in many places, local feuds have arisen, and it was not possible to set up an intercommunal structure for the whole of the urban area: some communes refusing to take part in it, or even creating their own structure. In some urban areas like Marseille there exist four distinct intercommunal structures! In many areas, rich communes have joined with other rich communes and have refused to let in poorer communes, for fear that their citizens would be overtaxed to the benefit of poorer suburbs. Moreover, intercommunal structures in many urban areas are still new, and fragile: Tensions exist between communes; the city at the center of the urban area often is suspected of wishing to dominate the suburban communes; communes from opposing political sides also may be suspicious of each other. Two famous examples of this are Toulouse and Paris. In Toulouse, on top of there being six intercommunal structures, the main community of Toulouse and its suburbs is only a community of agglomeration, although Toulouse is large enough to create an Urban Community according to the law. This is because the suburban communes refused an urban community for fear of losing too much power, and opted for a community of agglomeration, despite the fact that a community of agglomeration receives less government funds than an urban community. As for Paris, no intercommunal structure has emerged there, the suburbs of Paris fearing the concept of a "Greater Paris", and so disunity still is the rule in the metropolitan area, with the suburbs of Paris creating many different intercommunal structures all without the city. One major often raised problem with intercommunality, is the fact that the intercommunal structures are not subject to direct election by the people, so it is the representatives of each individual commune that sit in the new structure. As a consequence, civil servants and bureaucrats are the ones setting up the agenda and implementing it, with the elected representatives of the communes only endorsing key decisions. == Classification ==