Metropolitan France

Metropolitan France accounts for 82.0% of the land territory, 3.3% of the exclusive economic zone (EEZ), and 95.9% of the population of the French Republic.

Similar terms existed to describe other European colonial powers (e.g. "metropolitan Britain", "España metropolitana").

By extension "metropolis" and "metropolitan" came to mean "motherland", a nation or country as opposed to its colonies overseas.

for metropolitan France only, and to analyze separate statistics for the overseas departments and territories.

[citation needed] 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).

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.

Legislators in 2023 voted to use the name l'Hexagone ("the Hexagon") to refer to what had previously been known as metropolitan France in an effort to move away from colonial language.

Map of Metropolitan France
Paris, metropolitan France
l'Hexagone illustrated by overlaying the outline of mainland France with a regular hexagon on the 1988 Charles de Gaulle commemorative 1 franc coin (celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Fifth Republic ). Going counterclockwise from the northwest/top-left, the sides of the hexagon are: 1. the Channel coast, 2. the Atlantic coast, 3. the Pyrenees (border with Spain ), 4. the Mediterranean coast, 5. the eastern border ( Alps , Jura and Upper Rhine ; Monaco to Karlsruhe ), and 6. the northeastern border (German Rhineland, Belgium, and Luxembourg; Karlsruhe to Dunkirk ).