France's Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs is officially dropping the centuries-old Mercator map projection in favor of one that more accurately reflects the true size of the world's continents, a change that will make France itself appear noticeably smaller on official maps.
Why The Old Map Had To Go
Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot announced the shift during a speech at the Sorbonne, arguing that the Mercator projection, designed for 16th-century marine navigation, artificially enlarges polar regions like Greenland and northern Russia while shrinking equatorial areas such as Africa. France will now use the Eckert IV projection instead, which preserves the true relative surface area of each continent.
A Longer Process Already Underway
The ministry says it has quietly been reducing its use of Mercator-style maps since 2021 in favor of more geographically accurate representations, and the latest announcement formalizes that shift across French diplomatic materials going forward. Officials say the transition will happen gradually rather than overnight, since Mercator-style maps remain useful for specific tasks like navigation charts.
Part Of A Broader UN Push
The French announcement coincided with a United Nations General Assembly resolution encouraging governments, schools and technology companies to adopt equal-area map projections such as Equal Earth, which the UN says correct long-standing distortions tied to colonial-era cartography. The resolution passed with only the United States voting against it, with US officials criticizing the move as an ideological project, while six other countries abstained.
Not Everyone Is Convinced
The UN has stressed the resolution does not ban the Mercator projection outright or mandate a single alternative map, leaving individual countries and institutions free to choose their own approach. Even so, the debate has reignited long-running arguments about how something as seemingly neutral as a map can shape global perceptions of which countries and regions matter most.