Administration of Paris

The city of Paris is a commune (municipality), divided into twenty municipal arrondissements numbered in a clockwise spiral outward from the Ier arrondissement at the centre. The two parks on the edge of the city proper, Bois de Boulogne and Bois de Vincennes, belong to the 16th and 12th arrondissements respectively. Each arrondissement has a directly-elected council (conseil d’arrondissement), which in turn elects the arrondissement mayor. A selection of members from each arrondissement council form the Council of Paris (Conseil de Paris), which elects the mayor of Paris, a position created in 1977.

Paris has yet to completely emerge from the centralised administrative system created by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1800: the State-appointed prefect of Police is in charge of public order and the Paris Fire Brigade). Although Paris has no municipal police force, it does have its own traffic wardens.

Paris departement

The city of Paris is also departement no. 75, which is a unique status solely introduced for the capital city. The Council of Paris, presided by the Mayor of Paris, is the single council for both entities, meeting either as municipal council (conseil municipal) or as departmental council (conseil general) depending on the issue to be debated.

The State appointed Prefect of Paris, not to be confused with the Prefect of Police, is the representative of the French State in the Paris departement, in charge of the control of legality as in other French departements. The Prefect of Paris is at the same time regional Prefect of Ile-de-France, in charge of some economic development and urban planning issues for the whole region of Ile-de-France.

Number 75 was the official number of the Seine departement, which encompassed the city of Paris and its nearest suburbs. In 1968, Seine was split into four new departements: the city of Paris proper (which retained no. 75) and the departements of Hauts-de-Seine (92), Seine-Saint-Denis (93), and Val-de-Marne (94). The latter departements form a ring around Paris often called petite couronne (”small ring”), as opposed to the grande couronne (”large ring”) of the more distant suburbs.

The Prefecture of Police jurisdiction, formerly the whole Seine departement, is now limited to Paris proper, but for some matters (such as fire protection or rescue operations), it still covers the three departements of the petite couronne. However, the jurisdiction of the Prefecture of Paris, called Prefecture of the Seine until 1968, is now strictly limited to the city of Paris.

Paris as the prefecture of Ile-de-France

Paris is also the prefecture, or capital city, of the Ile-de-France region which was created in 1976 to replace the District of the Paris Region created in 1961. Ile-de-France encompasses eight departements: the Paris departement, the three departements of the petite couronne, and the four larger departements of the grande couronne (Val-d’Oise (95), Yvelines (78), Essonne (91) and Seine-et-Marne (77)).

The Ile-de-France region, the seven departements of petite couronne and grande couronne, and the hundreds of suburban communes around the city of Paris all have separate administrations, resulting in an extremely complex administrative grid. Proposals for a more efficient metropolitan structure to cover the city of Paris and some of the suburbs range from the socialist idea of a loose “metropolitan conference” (conference metropolitaine) to the right-wing idea of a more integrated Grand Paris (”Greater Paris”).