The administrative divisions of France today are the result of two centuries of evolution. While the French Revolution established the départements in 1790, the goal then was to provide proximity of administrative services in a highly centralized state. The necessity of relying on regional metropoles to foster economic development led the French State to establish a new level of regional entities, starting in the 1950s. The régions were granted extended powers and fiscal responsibility in the 1980s, by which time there were 22 of them containing from 2 to 8 départements.
Finally, the French government considered that some of those regions were to small and proceeded to merge some of them, reducing their number to 13 in 2015. This map shows the dual level of régions and départements as it stands in 2022.
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France in 2022
