Saint Barthélemy legal data from official sources, structured for AI and legaltech.

Saint-Barthélemy is a French overseas collectivity (collectivité d'outre-mer) in the Lesser Antilles, governed by Article 74 of the French Constitution since it separated from Guadeloupe in 2007. It is a civil-law jurisdiction: French national law applies by default, while the Conseil territorial holds devolved legislative competence over defined local matters — including its own tax regime, town planning, roads, the environment, and tourism. Local acts are published in the Recueil des actes administratifs of the Collectivité, and French legislation in the Journal Officiel de la République Française (Légifrance); the working language is French. Courts sit within the French judicial and administrative system, with appeals running to the Cour d'appel de Basse-Terre, the Cour administrative d'appel de Bordeaux, the Cour de cassation, and the Conseil d'État.

Point-in-time matters here because Saint-Barthélemy's statute and competences have kept evolving: the 2007 organic law that created the collectivity, its status as an EU Overseas Country and Territory (OCT) since 2012 — which changed how EU customs, VAT, and free-movement rules apply — and successive amendments to the Code général des collectivités territoriales all mean a citation to a superseded provision can simply be wrong. Point-in-time data straight from the source is what keeps a Saint-Barthélemy legal research answer correct today.