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There are very many French communes, they are very old, and local people are greatly attached to them. However, they are currently going through all sorts of different changes, which entail and require extensive reforms. Communes still retain their ‘general competence’ (while that of the departments and the regions has been abolished). However, the real situation increasingly differs from the traditional theoretical framework: intercommunality is being developed, and its different forms are increasingly prevailing upon communes, whose competences are increasingly being transferred to intercommunal cooperation agencies, which progressively integrate their members over time. In parallel, differences between communes are growing as they exercise different general interest functions requiring increasingly extensive and complex cooperation with other entities, including the state. However, these changes have not yet led to an overhaul of communes.