French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique and Réunion become overseas départements of France.
The overseas departments and regions of France (French: dpartements et rgions d'outre-mer, pronounced [depatm e ej dutm]; DROM) are departments of France that are outside metropolitan France, the European part of France. They have exactly the same status as mainland France's regions and departments. The French Constitution provides that, in general, French laws and regulations (France's civil code, penal code, administrative law, social laws, tax laws, etc.) apply to French overseas regions the same as in metropolitan France, but can be adapted as needed to suit the region's particular needs. Hence, the local administrations of French overseas regions cannot themselves pass new laws.
As integral parts of France and the European Union, overseas departments are represented in the National Assembly, Senate, and Economic and Social Council, vote to elect members of the European Parliament (MEP), and also use the euro as their currency. The overseas departments and regions are not the same as the overseas collectivities, which have a semi-autonomous status.
Each overseas department is the sole department in its own overseas region (French: rgion d'outre-mer) with powers identical to the regions of metropolitan France. Because of the one-to-one correspondence, informal usage does not distinguish the two, and the French media use the term dpartement d'outre-mer (DOM) almost exclusively.
Since March 2011, the five overseas departments and regions of France are:
French Guiana in South America;
Guadeloupe in the Caribbean;
Martinique in the Caribbean;
Mayotte in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of East Africa;
Runion in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of East Africa.Guadeloupe and Runion each have separate departmental and regional councils, while in Mayotte, Guiana and Martinique, the two layers of government are consolidated so one body wields both sets of powers. The overseas departments acquired these additional powers in 1982, when France's decentralisation policy dictated that they be given elected regional councils and other regional powers; however, the term "overseas region" was only introduced with the French constitutional amendment of 28 March 2003.
French Guiana ( or ; French: Guyane [ɡɥijan] (listen)) is an overseas department/region and single territorial collectivity of France on the northern Atlantic coast of South America in the Guianas. It borders Brazil to the east and south and Suriname to the west.
With a land area of 83,534 km2 (32,253 sq mi), French Guiana is the second-largest region of France (more than one-seventh the size of Metropolitan France) and the largest outermost region within the European Union. It has very low population density, with only 3.5 inhabitants per square kilometre (9.1/sq mi). (Its population is less than 1⁄200 that of Metropolitan France.) Half of its 294,436 inhabitants in 2022 lived in the metropolitan area of Cayenne, its capital. 98.9% of the land territory of French Guiana is covered by forests, a large part of which is primeval rainforest. The Guiana Amazonian Park, which is the largest national park in the European Union, covers 41% of French Guiana's territory.
Since December 2015, both the region and department have been ruled by a single assembly within the framework of a new territorial collectivity, the French Guiana Territorial Collectivity (French: collectivité territoriale de Guyane). This assembly, the French Guiana Assembly (French: assemblée de Guyane), replaced the former regional council and departmental council, which were disbanded. The French Guiana Assembly is in charge of regional and departmental government. Its president is Gabriel Serville.
Fully integrated in the French Republic since 1946, French Guiana is a part of the European Union, and its official currency is the euro. A large part of French Guiana's economy depends on jobs and businesses associated with the presence of the Guiana Space Centre, now the European Space Agency's primary launch site near the equator. As elsewhere in France, the official language is standard French, but each ethnic community has its own language, of which French Guianese Creole, a French-based creole language, is the most widely spoken.