France Address Standard

A French address is a street-and-number address with a national postal layout on top of it. That layout is defined, line by line, by a norm, and it carries something most countries have no equivalent for: CEDEX, a business delivery service whose post code is not the post code of the place.

This article describes the French address format, how CDQ represents it in the CDQ address model, how CEDEX is recognised and delivered, how the overseas territories are addressed, and which reference data CDQ maintains for France. It is the reference for anyone mapping French business partner data into CDQ, or consuming curated French addresses from CDQ.

In this article, you will understand:

• How the French postal layout is built, and what each line is allowed to contain
• Why neither the region nor the department appears on a French address, and what still needs them
• How each French level maps to a concept in the CDQ address model, and which SAP field it reaches
• What CEDEX is, why the CEDEX code must never overwrite the commune post code, and how CDQ holds both
• Why an address in Guadeloupe, Martinique, New Caledonia or another overseas territory carries the territory's own country code, and what stays French
• Which reference data CDQ maintains for France, and what the published values look like
• Where the current CDQ coverage for France is incomplete

Available in:

• CDQ Wiki: business partner metadata for France: browse the published French metadata

A French address has the ordinary European shape: a number, a street, a post code and a place. Most of it needs no special handling.

What is specific to France is narrower, and it is where integrations actually go wrong:

France has four levels below the country. One of them is used to deliver mail, and one more where there is no street.

Below that come the street and the number, then the building, staircase, floor and flat.

The two levels that are not used to address mail are still business data: the department is what a French establishment is registered against, and both levels are used for reporting and territory assignment. The department is the cheaper of the two to obtain, because the first two digits of any metropolitan post code are the department number.

The French postal address is a sequence of lines, each with a defined content. Using the line numbering of the national norm:

A complete address:

SOCIETE DUPONT
SERVICE ACHATS
BATIMENT B ENTREE 4
12 BIS RUE DE LA REPUBLIQUE
BP 40123
69134 ECULLY CEDEX

The two properties of this layout that matter most for an integration are that line 3 is not a street and line 6 may not be a commune post code. Both are covered below.

French writes the number before the street: 12 rue de la Republique, never rue de la Republique 12. Where two properties share a number, the second is distinguished by a repetition indicator rather than by a letter: 12 BIS, 12 TER, 12 QUATER. The indicator belongs to the number, not to the street name.

Line 3 holds a building, not a street. BATIMENT B, ENTREE 4, ESCALIER C, RESIDENCE LES TILLEULS and ZONE INDUSTRIELLE DU BOIS all appear on the line above the street. A mapping that sends the first non-empty line to the street field puts a building name there and loses the street.

BP is a post office box, and it is written on line 5. BP 40123 is a boite postale. CS (course speciale) and TSA (tri service arrivee) are further La Poste delivery mentions that appear in the same position and are equally not streets.

The department number is inside the post code. The first two digits of a French post code are the department, except for Corsica (post codes 20xxx, departments 2A and 2B) and the overseas territories (three digits, see below). This makes the post code a usable cross-check on the department, and makes a department supplied separately redundant rather than authoritative.

Accents are dropped in postal writing, not in the name. La Poste asks for uppercase without accents on the envelope, so ECULLY and Ecully are the same commune. The unaccented form is a presentation convention and must not be treated as a different value.

A lieu-dit replaces the street; it does not accompany it. In rural France a complete address is name, lieu-dit, post code, commune. There is no street and no number. Logic that requires a street will corrupt these addresses.

CEDEX (courrier d'entreprise a distribution exceptionnelle) is a La Poste service for organisations that receive high mail volumes. The organisation collects its mail at a sorting office rather than receiving it at the street address, and it is given a CEDEX code for that purpose.

Three facts follow from this, and they drive the whole model:

• The CEDEX code and the commune post code are different values. 75362 is the CEDEX code; the 8th arrondissement of Paris is 75008.
• The word CEDEX belongs to the locality line, not to the street and not to the post code.
• The CEDEX code is allocated per organisation, so it is a property of the business partner at that address rather than of the address alone. That is why it can be resolved from the business register.

The rule is that nothing is overwritten and nothing is invented.

So 69134 ECULLY CEDEX is stored as post code 69130 typed REGULAR, additional post code 69134 typed CEDEX, locality Ecully typed CITY, and a second locality ECULLY CEDEX typed POST_OFFICE_CITY. The delivered form can then be reassembled exactly, and a consumer that only wants the geographic post code can take the regular one.

The CEDEX values are taken from the French business register, which records the CEDEX code of an establishment alongside its address. A register match is therefore evidence, not a guess: it ties the CEDEX code to a named company at a known SIRET.

The SAP post code field takes the CEDEX code where one exists, because that is the code the mail has to carry. The commune post code stays available as the regular post code on the curated address. The city line takes the post office city, which is the locality written as La Poste expects it, and the plain commune name moves to the street supplement line.

France has eleven territories overseas that are written in the French layout. They share one property that matters for data: each has its own ISO 3166-1 country code, while the French post, the SIRET and the French VAT number still apply.

In these territories the department or collectivity number has three digits, not two, and it is the start of the post code. Saint-Barthelemy and Saint-Martin were part of Guadeloupe until 2007, and their post codes 97133 and 97150 still begin with the Guadeloupe prefix 971: only the whole code tells them apart.

CDQ holds an overseas address under the country code of the territory (GP, MQ, GF, RE, YT, MF, BL, PM, WF, PF, NC), not under FR. The systems that consume the address already treat these places as separate:

• ISO 3166-1 assigns each territory its own code.
• SAP keeps one country key per territory, so the region key table, the post code check and the tax settings are configured per territory.
• VAT: the overseas departments and Saint-Martin are inside the EU but outside the EU VAT area, and the other collectivities are outside the EU altogether. Reading such an address as FR would misstate the VAT territory.

An address that arrives as country FR with an overseas region, department or post code is accepted as input and converted to the territory's code. What stays as it is: the SIRET, the FR VAT number and the department code 971 to 976, so that register lookups and VAT checks keep working on the French identifiers.

The CDQ address model has two parallel hierarchies. Administrative areas represent the political containers, typed REGION and COUNTY. Localities represent the places themselves, typed CITY, DISTRICT, QUARTER, BLOCK, POST_OFFICE_CITY or POSTAL_DELIVERY_POINT_CITY. Streets are held as thoroughfares with the number in its own field, and buildings, staircases, floors and flats as typed premises.

France maps as follows:

CDQ delivers a region and a department with their ISO 3166-2 codes. An SAP system does not validate against ISO: it validates the region field against its own region key table, T005S, which is part of a customer's configuration. That key exists for tax and jurisdiction purposes, which is why it follows national tax or statistical numbering rather than ISO, and why the level it sits at differs from one country to the next.

The region key is customer-specific configuration, so this standard does not define one: a T005S is specific to a customer and to a client, and no single value would be correct everywhere. What this standard fixes is the ISO 3166-2 code. The mapping from it to the key your system expects is yours to maintain.

For France the key your configuration holds is conventionally the department, not the region. A French address reaching SAP therefore needs the department number, which CDQ delivers as the administrative area level 2 code, and the region has no key of its own to map to. An overseas territory has its own country key in SAP, so its region key is configured under that country, and the department code 971 to 976 stays on the address.

Treat the ISO code as the value CDQ guarantees and the SAP key as a mapping you own. Confirm which level your configuration uses before deciding which CDQ field feeds it.

12 BIS RUE DE LA REPUBLIQUE, 69134 ECULLY CEDEX, in the CDQ address model:

32 entries: the 13 metropolitan regions, the overseas regions and departments, the overseas collectivities, and two uninhabited territories (FR-TF, FR-CP). Each carries an ISO 3166-2 code and names in French, with English, German and Chinese on 26 of the 32.

Several places are held twice. Each of the five overseas departments appears under its current ISO 3166-2 code (FR-971, FR-972, FR-973, FR-974, FR-976) and under the code ISO withdrew in 2021 (FR-GP, FR-MQ, FR-GF, FR-RE, FR-YT), and Corsica appears as FR-20R (current) and FR-COR (withdrawn). The withdrawn codes are kept because customer data still carries them. Of each pair, the current code is the one to deliver.

Each region also carries a short name of at most twenty characters, which is the form a receiving system with a narrow region field can take: Prov-Alpes-Cote d'Az for Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur.

98 entries: the metropolitan departments, the Metropole de Lyon and the Collectivite europeenne d'Alsace, each linked to its region and keyed by its ISO code. The overseas departments are not in this list; they are held as regions, above. The key is the department number, which is also the first two digits of every post code in that department.

Three of the entries are not numbered departments but collectivities that occupy the same level: FR-69M for the Metropole de Lyon, FR-6AE for the Collectivite europeenne d'Alsace and FR-75C for Paris.

The words that identify a street type, a delivery mention or a building, published with the official La Poste abbreviation. Each term is typed to the CDQ concept it identifies. Most French terms are typed as street words, including words for a building, an entrance, a floor and a delivery service, which are not streets.

The abbreviation is what the SAP street line carries. Where a term is recognised, the expanded form is written to the thoroughfare value and the abbreviated form to the thoroughfare short name, and the short name is what the street field takes.

These are the gaps worth knowing about before designing an integration.

A French address is a street-and-number address written in a fixed line layout, with the number in front of the street and a repetition indicator instead of a house letter. Line 3 carries the building and line 5 carries the post office box or the lieu-dit, so neither belongs in the street field.

Of the four French levels below the country, only the commune is used to deliver mail, with the lieu-dit standing in where there is no street. Neither the region nor the department is written on an address, and the department is already encoded in the first two digits of the post code.

CDQ places the region in administrative area level 1 and the department in level 2, the commune in locality level 1 and the arrondissement or quarter in level 2. The street and its number stay in separate fields, and the building, floor and flat are typed premises.

CEDEX is modelled as two post codes rather than one: the CEDEX code as an additional post code typed CEDEX, and the commune post code as the regular one. The locality is kept twice as well, once as the commune and once as the post office city exactly as La Poste writes it. CEDEX values are resolved from the French business register by SIRET, by CEDEX code or by a full company match.

Overseas territories are addressed under their own ISO 3166-1 country code, with the department number kept at three digits and the SIRET and FR VAT number unchanged; the conversion from country FR is still to come. Regions and departments are maintained as CDQ reference data, together with the La Poste street term and abbreviation list. The commune and the levels below it are preserved as submitted, and CEDEX resolution depends on the business register being reachable, which a supplied SIRET makes considerably more likely.

• Business partner metadata for France
• Germany Address Standard
• Portugal Address Standard
• United States Address Standard

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