French overseas collectivities facts for kids

The Overseas collectivities (French: collectivité d'outre-mer or COM), are an administrative division of France. These territories include some former overseas territories and other French overseas holdings with a particular status. All of these were given the name collectivités d'outre-mer because of a constitutional reform on March 28, 2003.

As of March 31, 2011, there are five of these communities:

• French Polynesia, with a great degree of autonomy, two symbolic manifestations of which are the title of the President of French Polynesia (Le président de la Polynésie française) and the territory's additional designation as a pays d'outre-mer. Legislature: Assembly of French Polynesia.
• Saint-Barthélemy
• Saint-Martin
• Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, a group of islands in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada, which has a Territorial Council.
• Wallis and Futuna in the Pacific Ocean, which is the only inhabited part of France that is not divided into communes.