Administrative departments as of 1 January 2021

Departments existing on 1 January 2021 Sources: ADMIN EXPRESS COG 2021 edition - IGN - Original data uploaded to: https://geoservices.ign.fr on 17 June 2021; The Sandre administrative departments referential is based on the 2021 version of the Official Geographic Code of INSEE: codes and headings of the departments, as well as the codes of the regions to which they are attached. Creation of the Revolution (law of December 22, 1789), the department becomes an autonomous local authority, with a deliberative body and an executive elected, by the law of August 10, 1871.It is managed by a general council elected for 6 years by universal suffrage, which in turn elects a president, executive of the department who prepares and executes the deliberations of the general council, manages the budget and directs the staff. The department has broad competences: social work, construction and maintenance of colleges, rural reparcelling, organization of school transport,... There are 101 departments (including 5 overseas). A department belongs to a region and only one. Each overseas region consists of only one department. To better meet some of their needs that are common to other local authorities and that often go beyond the framework and capacities of a departmental entity, departments may join one or more inter-local authority institutions to each of which they will delegate one or more competences in order to pool the resources necessary to achieve their objectives.