French Department

The department is a administrative division of the France, at the same time a decentralized administrative Unit and a decentralized Local government agency .

France is divided into 100 departments including four overseas.

General information

The department is a territorial subdivision located between the area and the district. In a general way, an area contains several departments and a department is subdivided in several districts.

In continental France, the median surface of a department is of: 5985 km ². As comparison, the cérémoniaux counties of England are twice and half smaller and the counties of the the United States three times and half smaller.

According to the census of 1999, the median population of a department of continental France rose with: 511012 inhabitants, 21 times median population of a county of State-Plain but less of the two-thirds of a county ceremonial of England.

Each department has a Chef-lieu department which gathers its institutions. This chief town is generally more the big city of the department, but of many exceptions exist.

List departments

Administrative role

Administrative unit

The department is an administrative unit of common right since the An VIII (1799 - 1800) and remained. It is directed by the prefect of the department, named discretionarily by the government, assisted by Sous-préfet S for each sub-prefecture.

Many decentralized services of the State are organized within the framework of the department, like the Departmental management of the equipment (DDE) or the Departmental management of the sanitary affairs and social (DDASS) under the authority of the Prefet.

Local government agency

See also: General advice (France), General advice

The department is also a decentralized local government agency directed by the general advice, elected by the universal direct suffrage for six years. The cantonal elections take place every three years and renew half of the departmental assembly in order to allow her continuity. France counts 100 of them since 1985.

In 2004, the installation of the second shutter of the Décentralisation, whose act II was voted the August 13rd 2004, envisages important transfers of competence and means at the departments, in particular the transfer of the social securities and economic (like the Minimum wages of insertion), the management of the highway network (the Departmental management of the equipment becomes completely managed at the departmental level, with the transfer of its civils servant and of the financings), of competences education control of the inheritance.

In addition, in France, two departments, the Loiret and the the Sarthe, exert the conceding authority for the distribution of electricity, mission generally allotted to the communes. directed by the Prime Minister

History

Creation

The departments are created the March 4th 1790 by the constituent Assembly in order to replace the Provinces of France considered to be contrary with the homogeneity of the Nation. In a preoccupation with a rationality, the departments accepted a similar architecture: a sufficiently small portion of territory to be managed easily by a Chief town. The size of these departments was fixed in way such as it was to be possible to go in less than one day of horse with the chief town of each one of those since any point of their territory. In same optics, the departments were named not according to historical, not to point out cutting in provinces of the Ancien Mode, but purely geographical criteria (names of rivers, mountains, etc)

Evolution

The number of departments, initially of 83, climbed to 130 (see Liste of the 130 departments of 1811) in 1810 with the territorial Annexation S of the Republic and the Empire, in Germany, in the Netherlands, in Italy, Spain, then was tiny room to 86 after the fall of the emperor in 1815 (the Rhone-and-Loire divided into the Rhone and the Loire, creation of the departments of the Vaucluse in 1793, and of Tarn-et-Garonne in 1808). The annexation of Nice (the Alpes-Maritimes) and of the Savoy divided between the departments of the Savoy and the Haute-Savoie in 1860 led to a total of 89.

The two departments of the Alsace and one of the Lorraine (the major part of the Haut-Rhin, the the Low-Rhine and part of the Meurthe and the Moselle) were yielded to the Germany in 1871. The not annexed parts of Meurthe and the Moselle were amalgamated in new the Département of Meurthe-et-Moselle, carrying the total with 86. The annexed departments were restored in 1919, bringing back the full number to 89 (the returned parts of the old departments of Meurthe and the Moselle were amalgamated in the department of the Moselle). The part of Haut-Rhin which remained French in 1871, located around Belfort, was not reinstated in its department of origin in 1919 and constituted the department of the Territoire of Belfort only in 1922, bringing the total to 90. For that it was necessary to count on the departments in Algérie, of five departments until 1956 then of 15 departments until 1962.

The reorganizations of the Paris region in 1964 and the division of the Corsica in 1976 added six departments:

the the Seine gave Paris, the Hauts-de-Seine, the Seine-Saint-Denis and the the Valley-of-Marne
the Seine-et-Oise gave the the Essonne, the Yvelines and the Val-d'Oise
Corsica gave the Corse-du-Sud and the Haute-Corse

With the four overseas departments current (created in 1946), the total was changed to 100.

Future

Certain politicians, in favor of a Life republic, announce in their project the intention to remove the departments. It is the case of Arnaud Montebourg (PS). Their competences would be delegated to the areas with an aim of reinforcing decentralization.

Classification

In the beginning, the French departments were numbered (from 01 to 83) for the only needs for the postal services (see Liste of the 83 departments of 1790). The post office made be reproduced on each letter a seal in the number of the starting department. This system functioned under the Revolution and the Empire then was abandoned. A new classification was set up at the 20th century with five new departments (the Alpes-Maritimes, the Loire, Savoy, Haute-Savoie and Tarn-et-Garonne) which shifted the numbers. In 1922 indeed, the 89 departments were classified in the alphabetical order; number 01 was allotted to the Ain and the 89 with the Yonne. When the Territoire of Belfort was made up like department this year, it was added at the end of the list with number 90.

The recutting of the Ile-de-France, in 1964, took effect in 1965. It led to the creation of the departments of Paris (which took number 75 allotted hitherto to the the Seine), of the Yvelines (which was numbered 78 instead of the Seine-et-Oise) as well as the Essonne, Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis, the Valley-of-Marne and Val-d'Oise, added at the end of the list with numbers 91 to 95. Four of these five departments indeed recovered the numbers which had carried between 1951 and the 1957 four first Départements of French Algeria: respectively Algiers (91), Oran (92), Constantine (93) and Territories Southern Algerian (94). Morocco (99).

The Corsica (number 20) was divided in 1976 between the Corse-du-Sud (2A) and the Haute-Corse (2B).

The overseas departments accepted finally numbers 971 to 974 (number 96 is thus not used).

Beyond their function of cutting of the French territory, the numbers of departments belong to the daily life of the French. One finds them at the beginning of the zip codes (those from the two departments of Corsica always begin with 20), or in the social security numbers. They are also on the plates number of the vehicles since 1950, but more for a long time: as from 2008, classification will become national.

The French territories which are not departments also have similar numbers: 975 and 976 for Saint-Pierre-and-Miquelon and Mayotte (both Collectivités of overseas which approaches more than one department), 986,987 and 988 for Wallis-and-Futuna, the French Polynésie and the New Caledonia.

Although external to France, Monaco uses “98” for its zip codes. But Andorre, for its part, refused to use the code which the French post offices had allotted to him.

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