Talk:Overseas departments and regions of France

Merge?

Why is this entry separate from Overseas departments and territories of France? 83.79.0.104 (talk) 09:52, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Indeed!

This is a perfect confusion, the French overseas regions (Territoires d'Outre-Mer) are absolutely not the same as the overseas departments (Départements d'Outre-Mer)!
The first ones are :
French Polynesia (Polynésie Française)
New Caledonia (Nouvelle Calédonie)
Saint Martin (Saint-Martin)
Wallis and Futuna (Wallis et Futuna)
Saint Barthélemy (Saint-Barthélemy)
Saint Pierre and Miquelon (Saint-Pierre et Miquelon)

The second ones are :
Guadeloupe
French Guiana (Guyanne)
Martinique
Mayotte
Réunion (La Réunion)

I don't know how to use wikipedia, but I'd be glad if someone does what it takes to settle this confusion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.100.18.115 (talk) 05:46, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

As you said, the entities in that first list are territoires = territories—not regions. —Largo Plazo (talk) 13:23, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

Reunion

Is this overseas region going to be split into two departments? Passer-by 12:47, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Rewrite

I found it unnecessarily difficult to pin down ecxactly the status of the Overseas Departments—Martinique, Guadeloupe, Réunion, and French Guiana. I feel strongly that the first statement in this article should be an unambigous declaration that the have the same political status as metropolitan departments.

I was only able to find that out by reading the middle paragraph of the article Metropolitan France.

Nwbeeson 15:50, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

In this regard the following statement might be misleading: "These overseas departments have the same political status as metropolitan departments and are integral parts of France, similar to how Hawaii is a state and an integral part of the United States." The only distinction one makes between the US with Hawaii and the US without Hawaii is geographical: one says 'continental US' to indicate the US without Hawaii (like one says 'contiguous' to leave out Hawaii and Alaska). Is the distinction between Metropolitan France and the Republic of France (see [[1]]) the same as that between continental US and 'US' tout court? Richardson mcphillips1 02:28, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree with the statement that comparing Guadeloupe & France vs. Hawaii vs. United States is misleading, especially if you understand how the United States is politically organized. The United States is a Union, with most domestic (intrastate) power conferred to the states, while the federal government retains most of the international and interstate powers. France, on the other hand is a unitary republic, not a union or federal republic. The analogy is completely wrong, unless Guadeloupe has a special status that gives it some sovereignty the rest of the regions of France do not have. --WisTex (talk) 23:25, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't agree. The sentence is carefully worded and doesn't say e.g. that Hawaii and French Guyana have the same political status. For this comparison it doesn't matter how the US is organized as long as you understand that French Guyana is a French Departement with full rights just like Hawaii is a US State with full rights, even though they are both far away from their main lands. -- Repetition (talk) 14:51, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Well I must say this is an interesting system which the people of France have come up with. Given that it is (dare I say) a unique political arrangement in comparison to the rest of the world I like others couldn't really find anything else to compare it to. :-) At first, through my own ignorance when friends would tell me "overseas department" I kept thinking "ok, it is just a fancified word for overseas territory" (to be honest). But the thing that got me to finally understand the relationship that my friend from Martinique was trying to put across to me- is that just as Hawaii is an overall part of the overall US (country). That I should think of Guadeloupe & Martinique like that.

Instead, I like many other fellow Caribbean islanders were using the Caribbean thought process which is the thinking that "Overseas department" is more like a Puerto Rico--United States Government model or a British Territory & UK arrangement or even a Dutch Antilles and Netherlands type of political system. All of those systems are where you have the powerful centres and then the far-flung overseas areas which don't matter. Even in the Caribbean where we have multi party states like Antigua and Barbuda, the Turks and Caicos Islands, The Cayman Islands, Trinidad and Tobago, Saint Kitts and Nevis all of those government systems are arranged where you have a government centered mostly on one island and then the other islands around it are just administered by those centres.

Another something that stuck in my mind-- is I think--- that my friend had said something like there were I think 2? French Government ministries (I think) that were actually located based from Martinique and Guadeloupe. Does anyone know what those might be?? I'm not sure if I mis-understood and in fact they were trying to explain to me that they had government representatives in the Senate??? But I'm almost certain they named 2 ministries that were based on the Caribbean islands. The interesting thing though is. Even though they are considered parts of France they still have their own Internet ccTLDs. :-) .mq and .gp CaribDigita (talk) 01:50, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Mayotte claimed by the Seychelles

Really ? Is the note correct ? Hektor (talk) 08:09, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

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Merge Overseas regions into this article?

The term "Overseas region" appears to just be an additional designation for the overseas departments since they gained new powers. I think it would be better to have one article covering both designations, e.g., the lead could state:

"An overseas department, which is also designated an overseas region, is both a department and region of France, situated outside metropolitan France."

Thoughts?

Rob984 (talk) 00:33, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

Comment They're conceptually different; any one of those regions could, in theory, be reorganized into two or more departments, destroying any apparent equivalence. On the other hand, it isn't clear that, even in that case, the difference couldn't easily be disposed of within the confines of a single article, much as I proposed that Seven Sister States be merged with Northeast India. Largoplazo (talk) 01:01, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

Overseas regions are regions like metropolitan regions. Region and departments have differents power (for example social for the departments, economic attractiveness for the regions). All the French regions can be divided into more departements and in the past there was propositions to divide Guadeloupe and Reunion in two or more departments. Overseas regions have smaller territories or lesser inhabitants than metropolitan regions and are divided into one single departement with the departement power. With the evolution of région status, the population can merge the assemblies and transfer the department power to the region. Guiana, Mayotte, Martinique and Corse did it but Reunion, Guadeloupe and Alsace (before the merging in the new Grand Est region) didn't.--Monsieur Fou (talk) 08:48, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

Support, but I'd be a lot clearer with the wording. I'd use a second lead paragraph to explain something like:

Each overseas department is the sole department in its own overseas region (French: Région d'outre-mer), and the two layers of government are consolidated so one body wields the powers of region and department. These territories have had these political powers since 1982, when France's decentralisation policy dictated that they be given elected regional councils and other regional powers, but the term "overseas region" was created by the French constitutional amendment of 28 March 2003. It is virtually unused by French media, and in common use the term "overseas department" is used exclusively unless one is being careful to distinguish the two types of powers.

By giving the term a separate paragraph, it makes the formal distinction clear, while the text explains that they're interchangeable in practice. 209.209.238.189 (talk) 07:25, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

@Rob984, Largoplazo, Χ, and Monsieur Fou: I went and did the suggested merge. Further edits (fix my typos for me!) invited. 209.209.238.189 (talk) 08:50, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

Officially in France the new acronym is DROM-COM (Départements et régions d'outre-mer - collectivités d'outre-mer) for speaking about overseas France. The regions are the first level in the French administrative division and all the reforms since 1981 reduced the power of the departments. Many suggest the departmental division must be abolished. In the real life French people will say "From which region are you come from ?", they don't care about departments and the people will answer Occitanie, Bretagne, Réunion, Guyane or Corse without saying if it's an overseas or a metropolitan region. The region suggest a form of identity, the department doesn't; it is strictly administrative. --Monsieur Fou (talk) 12:00, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

It is not true that overseas departments and regions always have consolidated governments (a.k.a. single territorial collectivity). As of 2018, only Mayotte, Guiana and Martinique have consolidated governments while Guadeloupe has explicitly rejected the option. $\color {blue}\chi$_chi (talk) 10:57, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

@Monsieur Fou: Thank you for the feedback. I confess complete ignorance of the subject matter; I was just combining the existing articles' texts with a few tweaks inferred from the talk page discussion here. I'd like to ask you:

• "DROM-COM" confuses me. First of all, "DROM" and "COM" are mutually exclusive, are they not? It would certainly make sense to rework this article to include the term "DROM", but "COM" is something else. And that's not all of overseas France. The territoires d'outre-mer, the pays d'outre-mer (Polynesia), and the special cases of Nouvelle-Calédonie and Île de Clipperton. are neither DROM nor COM. So what exactly is the use of the term "DROM-COM"?
• My understanding (based on reading Wikipedia in English, not source material, so I might be badly misled) is that when talking about the DROM, the older term "Départements d'outre-mer" is used almost exclusively except in formal contexts. As you say, regions are more important than departments in metropolitan France, and when asked about a region, someone from overseas might answer with something not a region at all, like Saint Martin, since that's probably what the person asking is interested in. This is like an American asked what state they are from and answering "Puerto Rico" or "District of Columbia" (neither of which is a state), or a Canadian answering "Yukon" or "Northwest territories" (neither of which is a province).

@Χ: Thank you very much for that clarification! I'll edit the article correspondingly. (Um, never mind it's already done.) 209.209.238.189 (talk) 22:33, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

P.S. If anyone would like to correct the Departments of France article to reflect the merger of the former departments of Corse-du-Sud and Haute-Corse into a single territorial collectivity, it would definitely be appreciated. I tried to do Corsica, but the departments article needs more work. 209.209.238.189 (talk) 23:15, 10 August 2018 (UTC)