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50-526: Meurthe-et-Moselle ( French pronunciation: [mœʁt e mɔzɛl] ) is a département in the Grand Est region of France , named after the rivers Meurthe and Moselle . Its prefecture and largest city is Nancy and it borders the departments of Meuse to the west, Vosges to the south, Moselle and Bas-Rhin and it borders the Belgian province of Luxembourg and the country of Luxembourg by

100-456: A county of the United States . At the 2001 census, the median population of a department in continental France was 511,000 inhabitants, which is 21 times the median population of a United States county, but less than two-thirds of the median population of a ceremonial county of England and Wales. Most of the departments have an area of between 4,000 and 8,000 km (1500 to 3000 sq. mi.), and

150-495: A more uniform division into departments ( département ) and districts in late 1789. The process began on 4 August 1789 with the elimination of provincial privileges, and a 22 December 1789 decree (with letters patent in January 1790) provided for the termination of the provincial governments. The modern department system, as all-purpose units of the government, was decreed on 26 February 1790 (with letters patent on 4 March 1790) by

200-788: A nation or country as opposed to its colonies overseas. Today, some people in Overseas France object to the use of the term la France métropolitaine due to its colonial history. They prefer to call it "the European territory of France" ( le territoire européen de la France ), as the Treaties of the European Union do. Likewise, they oppose treating overseas France and metropolitan France as separate entities. For example, INSEE used to calculate its statistics (demography, economy, etc.) for metropolitan France only, and to analyze separate statistics for

250-567: A person from metropolitan France is often called a métro , short for métropolitain . The term "metropolitan France" dates from the country's colonial period (from the 16th to the 20th centuries), when France was referred to as la Métropole (literally "the Metropolis"), as distinguished from its colonies and protectorates, known as les colonies or l'Empire . Similar terms existed to describe other European colonial powers (e.g. "metropolitan Britain", "España metropolitana"). This application of

300-509: A population between 320,000 and 1 million. The largest in area is Gironde (10,000 km (3,900 sq mi).), while the smallest is the city of Paris (105 km (41 sq mi).). The most populous is Nord (2,550,000) and the least populous is Lozère (74,000). The departments are numbered: their two-digit numbers appear in postal codes , in INSEE codes (including "social security numbers") and on vehicle number plates . Initially

350-405: A president. Their main areas of responsibility include the management of a number of social and welfare allowances, of junior high school ( collège ) buildings and technical staff, and local roads and school and rural buses, and a contribution to municipal infrastructures. Local services of the state administration are traditionally organised at departmental level, where the prefect represents

400-399: A three-digit number. The number is used, for example, in the postal code and was until recently used for all vehicle registration plates . Residents commonly use the numbers to refer to their own department or a neighbouring one, for example inhabitants of Loiret may refer to their department as "the 45". More distant departments are generally referred to by their names, as few people know

450-518: Is Nancy , the prefecture. As of 2019, there are 10 communes with more than 10,000 inhabitants: The president of the Departmental Council is Chaynesse Khirouni , elected in July 2021. Departments of France In the administrative divisions of France , the department ( French : département , pronounced [depaʁtəmɑ̃] ) is one of the three levels of government under

500-525: Is commonly associated, though not all are officially recognised or used. Unlike the rest of the French possessions in Africa , Algeria was divided into departments just like Corsica or Normandy from 1848 until its independence in 1962. These departments were supposed to be "assimilated" or "integrated" to France sometime in the future. There are a number of former departments in territories conquered by France during

550-411: Is known as the prefecture ( préfecture ) or chef-lieu de département and is generally a town of some importance roughly at the geographical centre of the department. This was determined according to the time taken to travel on horseback from the periphery of the department. The goal was for the prefecture to be accessible on horseback from any town in the department within 24 hours. The prefecture

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600-481: Is made up of 577 deputies, 539 of whom (93.4% of the total) are elected in metropolitan France, 27 (4.7% of the total) in overseas France, and 11 (1.9% of the total) by French citizens living in foreign countries. Legislators in 2023 voted to use the name l'Hexagone ("the Hexagon ") to refer to what had previously been known as metropolitan France in an effort to move away from colonial language. The image of France as

650-555: Is not necessarily the largest city in the department: for instance, in Saône-et-Loire department the capital is Mâcon , but the largest city is Chalon-sur-Saône . Departments may be divided into arrondissements . The capital of an arrondissement is called a subprefecture ( sous-préfecture ) or chef-lieu d'arrondissement . Each department is administered by a departmental council ( conseil départemental ), an assembly elected for six years by universal suffrage , with

700-590: Is suspended since the signing of the Antarctic Treaty in 1959). Thus, metropolitan France accounts for 82.0% of the French Republic's land territory. At sea, the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of metropolitan France covers 333,691 km (128,839 sq mi), while the EEZ of Overseas France covers 9,825,538 km (3,793,661 sq mi), for a total of 10,159,229 km (3,922,500 sq mi) in

750-528: Is the collective name for all the French departments and territories outside Europe . Metropolitan and overseas France together form the French Republic. Metropolitan France accounts for 82.0% of the land territory, 3.3% of the exclusive economic zone (EEZ), and 95.9% of the population of the French Republic. Some small parts of France (e.g. Cerdanya ) are a part of the Iberian Peninsula . In overseas France,

800-629: The Ponts et Chaussées (Bridges and Highways) infrastructure administration. Before the French Revolution , France gained territory gradually through the annexation of a mosaic of independent entities. By the end of the Ancien Régime it was organised into provinces . During the Revolution they were dissolved, partly in order to weaken old loyalties. The National Constituent Assembly decided to create

850-602: The 1823 French intervention ending the trienio liberal ) and the 1833 territorial division of Spain , which forms the basis of the present day Provinces of Spain with minor modifications, are also based on the French model of departments of roughly equal size. Most French departments are assigned a two-digit number, the Official Geographical Code, allocated by the Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques ( Insée ). Overseas departments have

900-600: The French Revolution and Napoleonic Empire that are now not part of France: Dutch Republic : Holy Roman Empire : Dutch Republic : Holy Roman Empire : Dutch Republic : Holy Roman Empire : Holy Roman Empire : Electorate of the Palatinate Electorate of the Palatinate Kingdom of Prussia : Imperial Free City of Wesel (after 1805) Notes for Table 7: Metropolitan France In contrast, overseas France ( France d'outre-mer )

950-471: The ISO 3166-2 country subdivision codes for the metropolitan departments. The overseas departments have three digits. Originally, the relationship between the departments and the central government was left somewhat ambiguous. While citizens in each department elected their own officials, the local governments were subordinated to the central government, becoming instruments of national integration. By 1793, however,

1000-632: The Ministry of the Interior releases election results, they use the term la France entière to refer to the entire French Republic, including all of overseas France, and not just the five overseas departments. Since INSEE now calculates statistics for la France entière , this practice has spread to international institutions. For instance, the French GDP published by the World Bank includes metropolitan France and

1050-585: The National Constituent Assembly . Their boundaries served two purposes: The old nomenclature was carefully avoided in naming the new departments. Most were named after an area's principal river or other physical features. Even Paris was in the department of Seine . Savoy , during its temporary occupation, became the department of Mont-Blanc . The provinces continued to exist administratively until 21 September 1791. The number of departments, initially 83, had been increased to 130 by 1809 with

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1100-576: The President of the Departmental Council as executive of the department. Before 1982, the chief executive of the department was the prefect ( préfet ), who represents the Government of France in each department and is appointed by the President of the French Republic . The prefect is assisted by one or more sub-prefects ( sous-préfet ) based in the subprefectures of the department. Since 1982,

1150-569: The Territoire de Belfort ; the remaining parts of Meurthe and Moselle were merged into a new Meurthe-et-Moselle department. When France regained the ceded departments after World War I , the Territoire de Belfort was not reintegrated into Haut-Rhin. In 1922 it became France's 90th department. Likewise the Lorraine departments were not changed back to their original boundaries, and a new Moselle department

1200-651: The UMP , said in December 2008 that the fusion of the departments with the regions was a matter to be dealt with soon. This was soon refuted by Édouard Balladur and Gérard Longuet , members of the committee for the reform of local authorities, known as the Balladur Committee. In January 2008, the Attali Commission recommended that the departmental level of government should be eliminated within ten years. Nevertheless,

1250-545: The canton of Esch-sur-Alzette to the north. It had a population of 733,760 in 2019. Meurthe-et-Moselle was created in 1871 at the end of the Franco-Prussian War from the parts of the former departments of Moselle and Meurthe which remained French territory. The current boundary between Meurthe-et-Moselle and Moselle was the border between France and Germany from 1871 to 1919 and again between 1940 and 1944. The only subsequent change took place in 1997 and involved

1300-801: The salient of the Arrondissement of Briey . It is one of two departments in France which border with Luxembourg. Parts of Meurthe-et-Moselle belong to the Lorraine Regional Natural Park . The department extends for 130 km from north to south and is between 7 and 103 km wide. Its chief rivers are the Moselle , the Meurthe , the Chiers , and the Vezouze . The economy was highly dependent on mining until

1350-456: The 1960s. There are iron, salt, and lime extraction sites. The urban area around Nancy has an economy based largely on services, research, and higher education. The inhabitants of the department are known as Meurthe-et-Mosellans . The area around Nancy has become highly urbanized, whereas the Saintois in the south is quite rural. Population development since 1801: The most populous commune

1400-412: The Balladur Committee has not retained this proposition and does not advocate the disappearance of the departments, but simply "favors the voluntary grouping of departments", which it suggests also for the regions, with the aim of reducing the number of regions to 15. This committee advocates, on the contrary, the suppression of the cantons. Each department has a coat of arms and a flag with which it

1450-402: The French Republic (excluding Adélie Land). Thus, metropolitan France accounts for 3.3% of the French Republic's EEZ. According to INSEE , 65,250,000 people lived in metropolitan France as of January 2021, while 2,785,000 lived in overseas France, for a total of 68,035,000 inhabitants in the French Republic. Thus, metropolitan France accounts for 95.9% of the French Republic's population. In

1500-826: The Republic (all created in 1946) – French Guiana , Guadeloupe , Martinique and Réunion – the total number of departments in the French Republic had become 101. In 2015 the Urban Community of Lyon was split from Rhône to form the Métropole de Lyon , a sui generis entity, with the powers of both an intercommunality and those of a department on its territory, formally classified as a "territorial collectivity with particular status" ( French : collectivité territoriale à statut particulier ) and as such not belonging to any department. As of 2019 Corse-du-Sud and Haute-Corse are still administrative departments, although they no longer have

1550-423: The administrative basis for the local organisation of police, fire departments as well as, in certain cases, elections. Each department is administered by an elected body called a departmental council ( sg. conseil départemental , pl. conseils départementaux ). From 1800 to April 2015, these were called general councils ( sg. conseil général , pl. conseils généraux ). Each council has

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1600-414: The country's capital city, is a commune as well as a department. In continental France ( metropolitan France , excluding Corsica ), the median land area of a department is 5,965 km (2,303 sq mi), which is two-and-a-half times the median land area of the ceremonial counties of England and the preserved counties of Wales and slightly more than three-and-half times the median land area of

1650-491: The figures for France since the mid-2010s too. INSEE refers to metropolitan France and the five overseas departments as la France entière ("the whole of France"). "The whole of France" includes the five overseas departments, but does not include the other overseas collectivities and territories that have more autonomy than the departments. Other branches of the French administration may have different definitions of what la France entière is. For example, in contrast to INSEE, when

1700-515: The five overseas departments. The World Bank refers to this total as "France"; it does not use the phrase "the whole of France", as INSEE does. Metropolitan France covers a land area of 543,940 km (210,020 sq mi), while overseas France covers a land area of 119,396 km (46,099 sq mi), for a total of 663,336 km (256,115 sq mi) in the French Republic (excluding Adélie Land in Antarctica where sovereignty

1750-620: The government; however, regions have gained importance since the 2000s, with some department-level services merged into region-level services. The departments were created in 1790 as a rational replacement of Ancien Régime provinces with a view to strengthen national unity; the title "department" is used to mean a part of a larger whole. Almost all of them were named after physical geographical features (rivers, mountains, or coasts), rather than after historical or cultural territories, which could have their own loyalties, or after their own administrative seats. The division of France into departments

1800-455: The incorporation, for administrative reasons, of the little commune of Han-devant-Pierrepont which had previously fallen within the Meuse department. Meurthe-et-Moselle is part of the administrative region of Grand Est and the traditional region of Lorraine and is surrounded by the departments of Meuse , Vosges , Bas-Rhin , and Moselle , and by the nations of Luxembourg and Belgium by

1850-443: The national level (" territorial collectivities "), between the administrative regions and the communes . There are ninety-six departments in metropolitan France , with an additional five overseas departments , which are also classified as overseas regions. Departments are further subdivided into 333 arrondissements and 2,054 cantons (as of 2023). These last two levels of government have no political autonomy, instead serving as

1900-579: The new Savoyard territory, while the department of Alpes-Maritimes was created from Nice and a portion of the Var department. The 89 departments were given numbers based on the alphabetical order of their names. The department of Bas-Rhin and parts of Meurthe , Moselle , Vosges and Haut-Rhin were ceded to the German Empire in 1871 following France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War . A small part of Haut-Rhin, however, remained French and became known as

1950-407: The numbers corresponded to the alphabetical order of the names of the departments, but several changed their names and some have been divided, so the correspondence became less exact. Alphanumeric codes 2A and 2B were used for Corsica while it was split but it has since reverted to 20. The two-digit code "98" is used by Monaco . Together with the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code FR, the numbers form

2000-442: The numbers of all the departments. In 2014, President François Hollande proposed abolishing departmental councils by 2020, which would have maintained the departments as administrative divisions, and transferring their powers to other levels of governance. This reform project has since been scrapped. The first French territorial departments were proposed in 1665 by Marc-René d'Argenson to serve as administrative areas purely for

2050-405: The overseas departments and territories. People in the overseas departments have opposed this separate treatment, arguing that the then four overseas departments were fully part of France. As a result, since the end of the 1990s INSEE has included the four overseas departments in its figures for France (such as total population or GDP). The fifth overseas department, Mayotte , has been included in

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2100-429: The prefect retains only the powers that are not delegated to the department councils. In practice, their role has been largely limited to preventing local policy from conflicting with national policy. The departments are further divided into communes , governed by municipal councils . As of 2013, there were 36,681 communes in France. In the overseas territories , some communes play a role at departmental level. Paris ,

2150-460: The revolutionary government had turned the departments into transmission belts for policies enacted in Paris. With few exceptions, the departments had this role until the early 1960s. These maps cannot be used as a useful resource of voter preferences, because Departmental Councils are elected on a two-round system, which drastically limits the chances of fringe parties, if they are not supported on one of

2200-498: The second round of the 2017 French presidential election , 35,467,327 French people cast a ballot (meaning a turnout of 74.56%). 33,883,463 of these (95.53% of the total voters) cast their ballots in metropolitan France (turnout: 76.26%), 1,003,910 (2.83% of the total voters) cast their ballots in overseas France (turnout: 53.59%), and 579,954 (1.64% of the total voters) cast their ballots in foreign countries (French people living abroad; turnout: 45.84%). The French National Assembly

2250-428: The status of departmental " territorial collectivities ": region and department functions have been managed by a " single territorial collectivity " since 2018. Despite the intention to avoid the old nomenclature, often the names of pre-1790 provinces remained in use. For example, the name of Berry , though no longer having an official status, remains in widespread use in daily life. The departmental seat of government

2300-575: The territorial gains of the Republic and of the First French Empire . Following the defeats of Napoleon in 1814–1815 the Congress of Vienna returned France to its pre-war size and the number of departments was reduced to 86 (three of the original departments having been split). In 1860 France acquired the County of Nice and Savoy , which led to the creation of three new departments. Two were added from

2350-455: The two rounds by a moderate party. After the 1992 election, the left had a majority in only 21 of the 100 departments; after the 2011 election, the left dominated 61 of the 100 departments. (Mayotte only became a department after the election.) Key to the parties: The removal of one or more levels of local government has been discussed for some years; in particular, the option of removing the departmental level. Frédéric Lefebvre , spokesman for

2400-489: The words "metropolis" and "metropolitan" came from Ancient Greek " metropolis " (from μήτηρ mētēr "mother" and πόλις pólis "city, town"), which was the name for a city-state that created colonies across the Mediterranean (e.g. Marseille was a colony of the city-state of Phocaea ; therefore Phocaea was the "metropolis" of Marseille). By extension "metropolis" and "metropolitan" came to mean "motherland",

2450-484: Was a project particularly identified with the French revolutionary leader the Abbé Sieyès , although it had already been frequently discussed and written about by many politicians and thinkers. The earliest known suggestion of it is from 1665 in the writings of d'Argenson . They have inspired similar divisions in many countries, some of them former French colonies. The 1822 territorial division of Spain (reverted due to

2500-463: Was created in the regained territory, with slightly different boundaries from the pre-war department of the same name. The reorganisation of Île-de-France in 1968 and the division of Corsica in 1975 added six more departments, raising the total in Metropolitan France to 96. By 2011, when the overseas collectivity of Mayotte became a department, joining the earlier overseas departments of

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