France/Why almost half of Europe's communes are in France

There are some 35,000 communes in France, while the total number of communes in all European Union countries is close to 89,000.

Just take an hour's drive along the national highways and you'll realize: the French countryside is dotted with small towns. Some have names as comical as they are memorable (just ask the inhabitants of Montcuq and Bourg-la-Reine), while others are home to just a handful of souls.

In all, there are some 35,000 of them in France, while the European Union counts "only" 89,000, i.e. "only" 2.5 times as many. Why haven't some communes been merged to lighten the administrative load? Germany, with 15 million more inhabitants than France, has three times fewer communes.

France, the largest country in the European Union

So why so many communes? Evil tongues will tell you that the French administration's love of complex things may be part of the answer. But geographers and historians point to more serious explanations.

Firstly, France is the largest country in the European Union. It is therefore quite logical that the number of communes is higher than in neighboring countries. Nevertheless, Spain, which is almost the same size as France, has almost five times fewer communes.

Houses and a church

To better understand this phenomenon, we need to go back to the ^18th century. Historian Louis Henry estimates that around 1700, one in four Europeans was French, or 21.5 million inhabitants. A colossal figure compared to our European neighbors, which explains, among other things, why the number of hamlets was naturally very high. But population size doesn't explain everything.

Back then, the life of a French family was organized around the parish. Under the Ancien Régime, the notion of commune or village didn't exist, and peasant families built their homes close to churches and agricultural fields. This was a simple way of reducing the "work-sleep-church" commute: just a few minutes' walk between mass and work. The 44,000 or so parishes scattered across France at the time left a Christian legacy that is still visible today: of France's 35,000 communes, only 650 have no steeple.

The birth of communes after the Revolution

After the Revolution, parishes were a thing of the past! Secularism gave way to communes. When the hamlets were grouped together, this colossal figure came into being: 41,000 communes were born, and with them an administrative mille-feuille.

In the 1960s and 1970s, European countries reduced the number of communes. France tried to follow suit, but to no avail. The Marcellin law of 1971 was intended to simplify the map of France, but only 787 mergers came to fruition. Meanwhile, Sweden has reduced the number of communes by a factor of eight.

Source: www.lepoint.fr/