A moving picture coding method includes: making a determination as to whether or not to code all blocks in a current picture in the skip mode; setting, based on a result of the determination, a first flag indicating whether or not a temporally neighboring block is to be referenced, a value of a parameter for determining a total number of merging candidates, and a second flag for each block included in the current picture, the second flag indicating whether or not the block is to be coded in the skip mode; calculating, as a merging candidate, a neighboring block usable for merging; and coding an index which indicates a merging candidate to be used for coding of the current block and attaching the coded index to a bitstream.