French Guiana legal data from official sources, structured for AI and legaltech.

French Guiana (Guyane) is a French overseas department and region (DROM) on the northeastern coast of South America, bordering Brazil and Suriname. It is an integral part of the French Republic and an outermost region of the European Union, so it is a civil-law jurisdiction governed by French national law and directly applicable EU law, with limited local adaptations for the overseas departments. Primary legislation is published in the Journal officiel de la République française and consolidated on Légifrance; local acts are issued by the préfecture (in its Recueil des actes administratifs) and by the single territorial collectivity, the Collectivité territoriale de Guyane. The courts include the Tribunal judiciaire and the Cour d'appel de Cayenne, the Tribunal administratif de la Guyane, and, at the apex, the Cour de cassation and the Conseil d'État. The language of law and publication is French.

The law applicable in French Guiana moves quickly: the 2011 reform (Loi n° 2011-884) merged the département and région into a single collectivity from December 2015; EU instruments such as the GDPR apply alongside the Loi Informatique et Libertés (Loi n° 78-17 du 6 janvier 1978, as amended); and successive finance laws adjust the territory's specific tax and customs regime (including its exclusion from the EU VAT area and the octroi de mer). Citations to superseded provisions can simply be wrong, so point-in-time data straight from the source is what keeps a French Guiana legal research answer correct today.