For purposes of the Moody’s Analytics estimated and forecast data products, we have established geography codes for metropolitan areas in France. These are defined by the French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) as aggregates of communes (LAU 2). However, the source publishes insufficient time series data at this granularity, so we have resorted to definitions published in the final report of the ESPON Project 1.4.3. which uses department (NUTS 3) and region (NUTS 2) data as proxies.

The 12 metro areas are as follows.  We have omitted Grenoble because neither of the possible proxy geographies are suitable: Its corresponding department (Isère) is too large, and data at the LAU 1 level is insufficient.

• Bordeaux
• Lille
• Lyon
• Marseilles
• Montpellier
• Nantes
• Nice
• Paris
• Rennes
• Rouen-Le Havre
• Strasbourg
• Toulouse

The ESPON study considered metropolitan areas in 29 European countries. ESPON 1.1.1 produced a list of functional urban areas (FUAs) based on population in standardized NUTS-type areas; ESPON 1.4.3 made corrections to this list and added the concept of a morphological urban area (MUA), or core, such that a FUA consists of a core plus a surrounding labor pool. This is akin to the OMB's methodology for U.S. core-based statistical areas.

References:

• INSEE: Official geographic code, study areas (2010)
• ESPON: Project 1.4.3 Study on Urban Functions
• ESPON: 1.4.3 Final Report (PDF, 2007)
• Eurostat: NUTS (Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics)

Table 1 of 1. Metropolitan areas in France. We define each of our metropolitan areas as conterminous with departments (NUTS 3) and regions (NUTS 2) when of comparable size.

France has a national geo code of IFRA, all codes for its geographic subdivisions use IFRA as a prefix, and all Moody’s Analytics metro area codes feature the letter “M.” Each of the 12 areas is identified as IFRA (underscore)M(letter)(letter)(letter), and may be retrieved en masse by using the basket geo wild card IFRA_M^^^.