Intermunicipal cooperation
Introduction
The mancommunities of France (in French: Intercommunalité) are various types of groupings of municipalities into legal organizations that allow them to exercise certain common powers, mainly of a fiscal or economic nature, or to promote public works and cooperation services. These public bodies are called "Public Establishments for Intercommunal Cooperation" (EPCI) (établissement public de coopération intercommunale), and vary depending on their population, whether they are located in rural or urban areas, and whether or not they have their own taxation. As of January 1, 2025, France has 1,254 public establishments for intercommunal cooperation (EPCI) with their own taxation, a number that has remained stable since 2022. These are distributed in 21 metropolises, 14 urban communities, 230 agglomeration communities and 989 commune communities[1].
History
The first associations of French municipalities appeared in 1890, when the Third Republic created the "commune unions" to provide the smallest municipalities with sufficient economic capacity to ensure the most necessary public services. But we had to wait almost a century until the State gave a decisive boost to cooperation between municipalities within the framework of a general plan for the decentralization of their territorial organization with the law of March 2, 1982 on 'rights and freedoms of communes, regions and departments'.[2].
In the 1980s and 1990s, a series of laws completed it, initiating a process of transfers of powers and reorganization of local communities, in particular the law of February 6, 1992, which established the principles of decentralization and deconcentration of State services, and created communities of communes and cities. The law of July 12, 1999 implemented a new architecture of the associations with the creation of three types of communities with their own taxation: commune communities, agglomeration communities (with more than 50,000 inhabitants, with a city of at least 15,000 inhabitants) and urban communities (more than 500,000 inhabitants).[2].
Throughout the first decade of the century, several laws were adopted aimed at perfecting the territorial reorganization of France, which expanded the transfers of powers to the associations of municipalities, regions, overseas territories and departments, providing them with financial resources and personnel. The "Committee for the Reform of Local Collectivities" (), created in October 2008, presented several bills in the following years with the aim of implementing these measures and consolidating the new French territorial map. With respect to the commonwealths, he defined a new intercommunal body, the metropolis (), for the 11 most populated urban areas and the creation of Greater Paris, a metropolis from the merger of the Village of Paris with municipalities of the bordering departments of Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis and Val-de-Marne.[2].