Communes of France

A commune (French pronunciation: [kɔmyn] ^ⓘ) is a level of administrative division in the French Republic. French communes are analogous to civil townships and incorporated municipalities, and particularly to the New England towns, in Canada and the United States; Gemeinden in Germany; comuni in Italy; municipios in Spain; or civil parishes in the United Kingdom. Communes 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 communes are the fourth-level administrative divisions of France.

Communes 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. Communes typically are based on pre-existing villages and facilitate local governance. All communes have names, but not all named geographic areas or groups of people residing together are communes (lieu dit or bourg), the difference residing in the lack of administrative powers. Except for the municipal arrondissements of its largest cities, the communes are the lowest level of administrative division in France and are governed by elected officials including a mayor (maire) and a municipal council (conseil municipal). They have extensive autonomous powers to implement national policy.

A commune is the smallest and oldest administrative division in France.

The French word commune appeared in the 12th century, from Medieval Latin communia, for a large gathering of people sharing a common life; from Latin communis, 'things held in common'.

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.^{[circular reference]} 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 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 between 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.