Coordinates: 48°37′26″N 2°25′47″E / 48.6238°N 2.4296°E / 48.6238; 2.4296

Évry (French pronunciation: [e.vʁi]) is a commune in the southern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located 25.0 km (15.5 mi) from the center of Paris, in the "new town" of Évry Ville Nouvelle, created in the 1960s, of which it is the central and most populated commune.

Significant nearby communes include Courcouronnes, Corbeil-Essonnes, Ris-Orangis, Brétigny-sur-Orge, and Draveil.

Originally the commune was called Évry-sur-Seine (meaning "Évry upon Seine"). The name Évry comes from the Gallic name Eburacon or Eburiacos, meaning "land of Eburos" (a Gallic patronym), perhaps the leader of a Gallic tribe in the area before the conquest of Gaul by the Romans. After the conquest, the name was corrupted into Latin Apriacum, then Medieval Latin Avriacum, and later Evriacum.

In 1881 the name of the commune was changed into Évry-Petit-Bourg at the request of entrepreneur Paul Decauville, owner of Ateliers de Petit-Bourg, a large boiler works located in Évry and at the time the largest employer in the area. The factory owed its name to the hamlet of Petit-Bourg (one of the three hamlets on the territory of Évry) where it was built.

Essonne (pronounced: [ɛ.sɔn]) is a French department in the region of Île-de-France. It is named after the Essonne River.

It was formed on 1 January 1968 when Seine-et-Oise was split into smaller departments.

The Essonne department was created on 1 January 1968, from the southern portion of the former department of Seine-et-Oise.

In June 1963 Carrefour S.A. opened the first hypermarket in the Paris region at Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois (although the word "hypermarche" was first used only in 1966). Based on the ideas put forward by the American logistics pioneer Bernardo Trujillo, the centre offered on a single 2,500 m² (26,909.78 sq ft) site a hitherto unknown combination of wide choice and low prices, supported by 400 car parking spaces.

In 1969, the communes of Châteaufort and Toussus-le-Noble were separated from Essonne and added to the department of Yvelines.

Essonne belongs to the region of Île-de-France.

It has borders with the departments of:

All of northern Essonne department belongs to the Parisian agglomeration and is very urbanized. The south remains rural.

Manuel Valls (French: [manyɛl vals], Catalan: [mənuˈɛɫ ˈβaʎs], born August 13, 1962) is a French Socialist Party (PS) politician, deputy since 2002 and mayor of Évry. On May 16, 2012 he was appointed Minister of the Interior (Homeland security) in the French government of Jean-Marc Ayrault.

Valls was born in Barcelona, Spain, and became a naturalized French citizen in 1982. He is a prominent supporter of F.C. Barcelona, the famous club whose anthem was composed by a namesake of his, the cousin of his father. As reported on the Swiss Newspapers last week he is the son of a Spanish citizen, while his mother is a Ticinese, Swiss-Italian from Valle di Blenio, Canton Ticino.

After serving as an advisor on youth issues for Prime Minister Michel Rocard from 1988 to 1991, he was communications advisor to Prime Minister Lionel Jospin from 1997 to 2001.

He sought the PS nomination for President of France in the 2012 election. Finally ranked 5th of the first round of the PS primary, he called for a François Hollande vote in the second round. Valls is often considered in France as a representative of the social-liberal wing of the French Socialist Party, sharing common orientations with Scandinavian style Social Democracy and Blairism.