Departments of France Departments of France In the administrative divisions of France, the department (, ) is one of the three levels of government below the national level ("territorial collectivities"), between the administrative regions and the commune. Ninety-six departments are in metropolitan France, and five are overseas departments, which are also classified as regions. Departments are further subdivided into 334 arrondissements, themselves divided into cantons; the last two have no autonomy, and are used for the organisation of police, fire departments, and sometimes, elections. Each department is administered by an elected body called a departmental council ("conseil départemental" (sing.), "conseils départementaux" (plur.)). From
Local administrative unit Local administrative unit Generally, a local administrative unit (LAU) is a low level administrative division of a country, ranked below a province, region, or state. Not all countries describe their locally governed areas this way, but it can be descriptively applied anywhere to refer to counties, municipalities, etc. In the European Union, LAUs are basic components of Classification of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) regions. For each EU member country, two levels of Local Administrative Units (LAU) are defined: LAU 1 and LAU 2, which were previously called NUTS 4 and NUTS 5 respectively, until the NUTS regulation went into