Corsica

Genoa, Paoli and France

Corsica, the fourth-largest island in the Mediterranean, lies 170 km from France and 90 km from Italy.^[1] Genoa ruled it for most of the time from the late 13th century to the 18th, and Corsicans are closely related to Sardinians and Tuscans.^[2][1] A rebellion against Genoa from 1729 led to a Corsican republic under Pasquale Paoli in 1755, with a notably liberal constitution.^[1]

In 1768 Genoa sold its rights to France, and French troops conquered the island. Napoleon Bonaparte was born in Ajaccio on 15 August 1769, the year Corsica became a province of France.^[1] Spoken Corsican stayed the main language of every class on the island until the First World War.^[2]

From region to special status

Corsica was split from Provence as a region of its own in 1970. A law of 1982 gave it a special status and a directly elected Corsican Assembly, the first time France’s centralised state had given a region its own self-governing powers.^[2] In 1991 the Joxe law made it a “territorial collectivity” with wider powers, including over the Corsican language.^[2][1]

A plan from Lionel Jospin’s government to let the Assembly adapt national laws was struck down by the Constitutional Council in January 2002. On 6 July 2003 Corsican voters narrowly rejected, by 51 percent, a plan to merge the island’s two departments into a single authority.^[2] The merger came anyway: since 1 January 2018 the whole island has been one “Collectivity of Corsica”.^[2]

Violence and the ballot box

In 1975 a dozen nationalist militants led by Edmond Simeoni occupied a vineyard at Aléria. The state sent more than 1,000 police and gendarmes, and two gendarmes were shot dead. A wave of bombings by the National Liberation Front of Corsica (FLNC) followed.^[2] The violence peaked in 1998, when the FLNC member Yvan Colonna killed the island’s prefect, Claude Érignac.^[2]

Nationalists took power by election instead. The Pè a Corsica alliance of autonomists and independence supporters won the 2015 regional election and, in 2017, 41 of 53 seats with about 56.5 percent of the vote. The autonomist Gilles Simeoni became head of the executive.^[2]

“Autonomous within the Republic”

In March 2022 Colonna, serving a life sentence, was attacked by another prisoner and died of his injuries. Riots broke out across the island, and the government opened talks on autonomy.^[2] President Macron has ruled out recognising a separate Corsican people, making Corsican an official language or creating a special residency status.^[2]

In March 2024 the government and Corsican leaders agreed a one-page constitutional text recognising Corsica’s “historical, linguistic and cultural community” and giving it powers to adapt laws and make some of its own, within limits a later law would set. The Corsican Assembly approved it on 27 March 2024.^[2]

On 23 June 2026 the National Assembly passed the bill by 271 votes to 202, with centrists and the left mostly for it and the right against.^[3] To take effect, the Senate must pass the same text, and three-fifths of both houses meeting in Congress must approve it. The Senate, where the Republicans, who have long been wary of autonomy, held 131 of 348 seats before its September 2026 election, is due to debate it from 26 October 2026.^[4]