Metropolitan France

This term is an official one and is used in everyday life in France but has no administrative meaning, as the overseas regions have the same administrative status as the metropolitan regions. However, only Metropolitan France is part of the Schengen Area. Its borders, especially in the east, changed significantly over the centuries but have remained largely unchanged since the independence of Algeria in 1962, with only minor adjustments, mainly to the border with Switzerland.

In contrast, overseas France (France d'outre-mer) is the collective name for the French departments and territories outside Europe. Together, metropolitan and overseas France form the French Republic. Metropolitan France accounts for 82.0% of the republic's land territory, 3.3% of its exclusive economic zone (EEZ), and 95.9% of its population. Some small parts of France, such as Cerdanya, are part of the Iberian Peninsula.

In overseas France, a person from metropolitan France is often called a métro, short for métropolitain.

Etymology

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 Spain", España metropolitana). This application of 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", 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", 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 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 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 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 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.