France
France (in French): France, pronounced/fs distinctions/(
listen)), officially the French Republic (in French): République française, pronounced/ /epyblik f̃ sculpture turning signals( listen)), it is a transcontinental country that extends through Western Europe and overseas regions and territories in America and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area extends from the Rhine River to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Mediterranean Sea to the Channel and the North Sea; the overseas territories include the French Guiana in South America, San Pedro and Miquelon in the North Atlantic, the French Antilles and many islands in Oceania and the Indian Ocean. Because of its various coastal territories, France has the largest exclusive economic zone in the world. France borders with Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Monaco, Italy, Andorra and Spain in Europe, as well as the Netherlands, Suriname and Brazil in America. Its eighteen integral regions (five of which are overseas) cover a combined area of 643 801 km2 and more than 67 million people. Culturally belongs to Latin Europe. France is a unitary semi-presiding republic with capital in Paris, the largest city in the country and the main cultural and commercial centre; other important urban areas are Marseille, Lyon, Toulouse, Lille, Bordeaux and Nice.
Inhabited since Paleolithic times, the territory of metropolitan France was settled by Celtic tribes known as Gauls during the Iron Age. Rome annexed the area in 51 BC. C., which gave rise to a differentiated Gallo-Roman culture that laid the foundations of the French language. The Germanic Franks formed the Kingdom of France, which became the heart of the Carolingian Empire. The Treaty of Verdun of 843 divided the empire, and Western Francia became the Kingdom of France in 987. In the High Middle Ages, France was a powerful but highly decentralized feudal kingdom. Philip II successfully reinforced royal power and defeated his rivals to double the size of the crown lands; by the end of his reign, France had become the most powerful state in Europe. From the middle of the 14th century to the middle of the XV, France was embroiled in a series of dynastic conflicts with England, known collectively as the Hundred Years' War, and a distinct French identity emerged as a result. The French Renaissance witnessed a flourishing of art and culture, conflict with the House of Habsburg, and the establishment of a global colonial empire, which in the 19th century XX would become the second largest in the world. The second half of the XVI century was dominated by religious civil wars between Catholics and Huguenots that severely weakened the country. France once again became the dominant power in Europe in the 17th century, under the command of Louis XIV, after the War of the Thirty Years. Inadequate economic policies, inequitable taxes, and frequent wars (especially defeat in the Seven Years' War and costly participation in the American War of Independence), left the kingdom in an economic strait. precarious at the end of the XVIIIth century. This precipitated the French Revolution of 1789, which overthrew the Old Regime and produced the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which expresses the ideals of the nation to this day.
France reached its political and military heyday in the early 19th century under Napoleon Bonaparte, subjugating much of continental Europe and establishing the First French Empire. The French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars marked the course of European and world history. The collapse of the empire began a period of relative decline, with France enduring a tumultuous succession of governments until the founding of the French Third Republic during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. The following decades saw a period of optimism, flourishing cultural and scientific, as well as economic prosperity, known as the Belle Époque. France was one of the main participants in the First World War, from which it emerged victorious at great human and financial cost. It was among the Allied powers of World War II, but was soon occupied by the Axis in 1940. After liberation in 1944, the short-lived Fourth Republic was established, later dissolved in the course of the Algerian war. The current Fifth Republic was created in 1958 by Charles de Gaulle. Algeria and most of the French colonies became independent in the 1960s, and most of them maintain close economic and military ties to France.
France retains its secular status as a world center of art, science and philosophy. It is home to the fifth largest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites and is the world's leading tourist destination, receiving more than 89 million foreign visitors in 2018. France is a developed country with the seventh largest economy in the world by nominal GDP and the ninth by PPP; in terms of aggregate household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings for education, healthcare, life expectancy, and human development. It remains a major power in world affairs, as it is one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and is an official nuclear weapons state. France is one of the founding and principal members of the European Union and the eurozone, as well as a key member of the G7, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Francophonie.
Etymology
Originally applied to the entire Frankish Empire, the name France comes from its Latin namesake France, or "kingdom of the Franks".
The name of the Franks is related to the English word frank ("free"): the latter comes from Old French franc ("free, noble, sincere"), ultimately from Latin medieval francus ("free, exempt from service; freeman, frank"), a generalization of the tribal name that arose as a loan from the Late Latin of the reconstructed Frankish endonym Frank. It has been suggested that the meaning "free" was adopted because, after the conquest of Gaul, only the Franks were free from tax, or more generally because they had the status of freemen in contrast to serfs or slaves.
The etymology of Frank is uncertain. It is traditionally derived from the Proto-Germanic word *frankōn, which translates as "javelin" or "spear" (the throwing ax of the Franks was known as the francisca), although these weapons may have been named after him. due to its use by the Franks, and not the other way around.
History
Prehistory
Significant Lower Paleolithic remains exist in the Somme River and traditional Pyrenees (Neanderthal man), as well as at La Chapelle-aux-Saints, Le Moustier and La Ferrassie. From the Upper Palaeolithic there are abundant remains of the Cro-Magnon and Chancelade men, dated to about 25,000 years old, which are located in the Dordogne valley. Among the most famous cave paintings in the world are those of Lascaux and of Font de Gaume in the French Pyrenees.
In the Mesolithic, some agricultural activities gradually replaced caves in importance, and in the Neolithic (from the iii millennium B.C.) the megalithic culture (which used menhirs, dolmens and burials). From around 1500 B.C. C. the age of the bronze begins, developing commercial routes. Acheulean industry tooling of Homo erectus from 900,000 to 1,000,000 years ago has been found in Le Vallonnet grotto in southern France. The Iron Age and Celtic cultures fall within the 1st millennium BCE. c.
Antiquity
Around the VI century a. In BC, the Ionian Greeks arrived in Gaul and founded the colony of Massalia (now the city of Marseilles), near the mouth of the Rhône, making it the oldest city in France. At the same time Gallic tribes began to penetrate eastern and northern France, thus gradually spreading to the rest of the country between the V and III a. C.
The concept of Gaul emerged during this period, which corresponds to the Celtic settlement territories located between the Rhine River, the Atlantic Ocean, the Pyrenees, and the Mediterranean. The borders of modern France are approximately the same as those of Ancient Gaul, which was a prosperous territory, territory of which, in the southernmost part, was subject to great Roman and Greek influences.
Around 390 B.C. the tribal chief Brenos and his troops crossed the Alps into Italy, defeating the Romans at the Battle of Alia, thus proceeding to besiege and ransom the city of Rome. Rome weakened, and the Gauls continued to harass the region until 345 BC. C. when they entered into a formal treaty with the city. But the Romans and the Gauls remained rivals for the following centuries, thus posing a threat to Italy.
Around 125 B.C. southern Gaul was conquered by the Romans, who named their new territory Provincia Nostra (Our Province), which in time evolved into the name of the modern French territory of Provence. Julius Caesar conquered the rest of Gaul and defeated the resistance led by the Gallic leader Vercingetorix in 52 BC. According to Plutarch and Brendan Woods, the Gallic Wars resulted in the conquest of 800 cities, 300 subjugated tribes, one million people turned into slaves, and another three million killed in battle.
Gaul was divided by Augustus into Roman provinces. Many cities were founded in this period, such as Lugdunum (modern-day Lyon), the capital of Roman Gaul. These cities were built in the Roman style, with a forum, theater, circus, amphitheater, and thermal baths. The Gauls mixed with the Roman colonists and eventually adopted Roman culture and language (Latin, from which French evolved). Roman polytheism mixed with Celtic polytheism in a process of syncretism.
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From the year 250 to 280 AD. In BC, Roman Gaul suffered from numerous crises with the limes being attacked on numerous occasions by barbarian peoples. Even so, the situation in the first half of the century IV was a period of prosperity and renaissance in Gaul. In 312 Emperor Constantine I converted to Christianity, which took root in the centuries II and III, and became firmly established over the centuries V and VI, at that time Saint Jerome) wrote that Gaul was the only region "free from heresy". But at the beginning of the V century the barbarian invasions started again. The tribes The Utonics invaded the region from what is now Germany, with the Visigoths settling in the southwest, the Burgundians along the Rhine River valley, and the Franks (from whom France takes its name) in the north.
In overseas France there were hunter-gatherer peoples in Guiana, in Saint Pierre and Miquelon paleo-Eskimo peoples settled, in the French Antilles the pre-Columbian period began; Guadalupe by pre-ceramic Native American groups; New Caledonia, Wallis and Futuna received their first inhabitants around 3000 BC. C. and their first Lapita culture, which developed in the i millennium BCE. C. The rest of the overseas territories were apparently unoccupied during this period.
Kingdom of the Franks (5th-9th centuries)
In 451, Attila, the leader of the Huns, invaded Gaul with the help of the Frankish and Visigothic peoples, managing to establish himself in the main part of Gaul. In the IV century, the border along the Rhine was crossed by Germanic peoples, mainly the Franks, located in the territories of present-day Belgium, the Netherlands and eastern Germany. This particular group would be the origin of the name France.
The Frankish people were eventually unified by Clovis I (Clovis, the origin of the names Louis or Louis), who reigned as king of the Franks came out from 481 and conquered a large part of the Gallic territory between 486 —fall of the Kingdom of Soissons, the last Roman remnant in the region— and 507 —Battle of Vouillé and establishment of Paris as the capital. He also stood out for being the first Germanic conqueror to convert to Orthodox Christianity (as opposed to the Arian heresy), being baptized in Reims around 496, so that he obtained the support of the Gallo-Roman elites and established an important historical link between the French crown and the Catholic Church. Clovis is often regarded as the founder of the first French state, although in a strict sense that kingdom was not established until 843, when the boundaries of Francia Occidentalis were delimited.
Clovis's successors—called Merovingians after his grandfather, Meroveo—used to divide land among his sons, so there was rarely a single Frankish king during this period. The last Merovingian rulers, dubbed "lazy kings," were eventually overshadowed by the figure of the Mayordomo of the palace. One of the most notable stewards was Carlos Martel, who defeated the Arab forces of the Umayyad Caliphate at the Battle of Poitiers (732), thus stopping the Muslim advance towards Rome through western Europe. In 751, his son Pepin the Short overthrew the Merovingians and founded the Carolingian dynasty, named after Pepin's son Charlemagne. After his accession in 768, the Frankish kingdom expanded rapidly to encompass much of Germany and Italy. At Christmas in the year 800, Charlemagne was crowned Emperor of the Romans by Pope Leo III, establishing the so-called Carolingian Empire.
Charlemagne attempted to revive the Western Roman Empire and its cultural greatness. His son, Louis I the Pious (Lodovico Pío), held the empire together, but it did not survive his death. In 843, the empire was divided into three parts: Western Francia —future France, given to Charles II the Bald—, Middle Francia —given to Lothair I— and Eastern Francia —future Germany, given to Louis II of Germania—.
Kingdom of France (843-1792)
The existence of France as a separate entity began with the aforementioned Treaty of Verdun. Western Francia comprised approximately the area occupied by modern France, of which it was a precursor, and retained most of the original territories of Clovis' kingdom.
The Carolingians reigned until the sudden death of Louis V in May 987. Hugh Capet was elected as his replacement, beginning the long-lived Capetian dynasty. This dynasty had little real power, they controlled as royal domain (the king's lands) only the lands surrounding Paris, known as “Ile-de France”. They were, as far as royal title refers above the dukes of Normandy, Brittany, Burgundy and Aquitaine, but in fact they were weaker and only constituted the so-called "primus inter pares".
Its kings continued to use the title "King of the Franks" until the government of Philip II the Augustus, who first used the title "King of France" in a diplomatic document dated 1204. The term "Kingdom of France" appears the following year. This monarch conceived that he had no effective royal power and that unless the power of the Plantagenet family was defeated, who after all were not only the kings of England but also were rulers of the French territories of Normandy, Maine, Anjou and Aquitaine. Therefore, he engaged in battle against them and deprived them of their territories in Normandy, Maine, Anjou and Touraine, thus generating four times more revenue for the French monarchy and increasing its power and influence.
His descendants—the House of Valois and the House of Bourbon—remained in power continuously until August 1792, when the First Republic was proclaimed. However, the last Capetian king, Louis Philippe of Orleans, would not abdicate until February 1848, when the Second Republic was proclaimed. The House of Bourbon, descended from the Capetians, still holds power in Spain and Luxembourg.
From 1066 onward, the kingdom of France found itself in constant conflict with the kingdom of England. This rivalry began with the Norman conquest of England, since the Duchy of Normandy —founded after successive Viking invasions— was still a vassal of the King of France. Thus, William the Conqueror was vassal (as Duke of Normandy) and equal (as King of England) to the King of France, creating recurring tensions.
Charles IV the Fair died without an heir in 1328. According to the rules of Salic law, the crown of France could not pass to a branch of female origin. Philip VI of Valois was chosen as the new king in opposition to Edward III of England, who claimed his right to the French throne as the son of Elizabeth of France and grandson of Philip IV. Tensions between the two kings finally erupted into the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453), which lasted—albeit with some interruptions—for a total of 116 years. The exact boundaries changed greatly over time, but the estates of the English kings within France remained extensive for decades. With charismatic leaders like Joan of Arc and Étienne de Vignolles (La Hire), the French were able to recapture most of their territories. The start of the war also coincided with the Black Death, which wiped out half of France's 17 million people.
Starting in the 16th century, during the reigns of Francis I and Henry II, the French monarchy began to become a absolute monarchy. The Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts of 1539 decreed, among other reforms, the imposition of the French language as the official language of the kingdom. In 1598, as a result of the wars of religion, the Edict of Nantes allowed (partial) freedom of worship in France, ending a period of instability that began in 1562. The Kingdom of France experienced its greatest splendor in the XVII, during the long reign of Louis XIV, "the Sun King" (1643-1715), one of the longest-lived of the history (although he did not really reign until 1651, when he turned 13). France began to get various overseas possessions in America, Africa and Asia and part of Europe, creating its own French colonial empire. This is also a period of great changes from a cultural point of view, in which French culture predominates throughout Europe and contributes to various artistic aspects such as literature (Molière) or theater (Pierre Corneille). In addition to this there was a great development of the sciences and philosophy (Pierre de Fermat, Blaise Pascal, René Descartes) that made France the cultural and intellectual center of Europe for several decades.
Much of the Enlightenment occurred in French intellectual circles, and French scientists made major scientific breakthroughs and inventions, such as the discovery of oxygen (1778) and the creation of the first hot air balloon (1783). French explorers, such as Louis Antoine de Bougainville and Jean-François de La Pérouse, participated in voyages of scientific exploration through maritime expeditions around the world. The philosophy of the Enlightenment, in which reason is defended as the main source of legitimacy, undermined the power and support for the monarchy of the French kings.
During the reign of Louis XV (1715-1774), France lost New France and most of its American possessions after the disastrous Seven Years' War (1756-1763), which resulted in England (now Great Britain)) becoming the dominant power in Europe. Her European territory continued to grow, however, with notable acquisitions such as Lorraine (1766) and Corsica (1770). Despite this, the Louis XV government remained highly unpopular, which would influence the French Revolution. His successor Louis XVI tried to reverse the situation by actively supporting the American War of Independence, but this only worsened the economic situation of the country, which was not prepared for a new war against England.
19th century (1789-1871)
Revolution and Republic
The secession of the Third Estate in the Estates General of 1789 and the creation of the Constituent Assembly marked the beginning of the French Revolution, whose symbolic milestone was the storming of the Bastille on July 14 (French National Day). This social, economic and political process took place between 1789 and 1799 and its main consequences were the abolition of the monarchy and the proclamation of the First French Republic in 1792, having eliminated all the economic and social bases of the Old Regime in France. The Republic was proclaimed on September 21 of the same year, several months after the capture of Louis XVI on August 10. The following year, on January 21, Louis XVI was executed by guillotine.
As first actions, the abolition of feudalism was decreed and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was published. However, political, social and religious tensions soon began to generate conflicts within the republican government. The conflict between the Jacobins and the Girondins resulted in the period of "The Terror", in which the Committee of Security used its power to persecute and execute all opponents of the new government.
Napoleon and the Empire
After a series of short-lived government schemes, Napoleon Bonaparte seized control of the republic in a coup on November 9, 1799, making himself "first consul" and, effective May 18, 1804, "Emperor of the French" Aside from his military prowess, Napoleon is also known for establishing the Napoleonic Code, a civil code that would remain in effect until the second half of the century XX and would serve as a model for other countries, such as Spain. He is also known for his talent to surround himself with brilliant experts with a high sense of the State, who knew how to create the legal and administrative framework of contemporary France. Some consider him one of the greatest minds in history. Others, however, consider him a bloodthirsty dictator and one of the most megalomaniac and disastrous characters of all time.
After leading the armies of the Revolution to victory in a war to defend the national territory threatened by the armies of the European monarchies, his army, the Grande Armée, conquered most of Continental europe. In the invaded territories, Napoleon appointed members of the Bonaparte family and some of his closest generals as monarchs of the territories. Today, the Swedish royal family descends from the Bonapartist general Bernadotte.
Although the political organization of France oscillated between republic, empire and monarchy for eighty-two years after 1789, the truth is that the revolution marked the definitive end of absolutism and gave birth to a new regime where the bourgeoisie, and on some occasions the popular masses became the dominant political force in the country. After Napoleon's final defeat in 1815 at the Battle of Waterloo, his victors met at the Congress of Vienna, where the French Bourbon monarchy was reinstated, but with new limitations defined by a constitution.
Monarchical restoration
The government of Louis XVIII tried to emulate a much more moderate and constitutional government, although at first it had to face a Chamber of Deputies (Chambre introuvable) that demanded more powers for the king and the nobility. His successor Carlos X, on the contrary, tried to restore the old powers of the king, justifying himself again in divine law. Popular discontent led to a second revolution in July 1830 that overthrew the king and established a new constitutional monarchy (nicknamed the July Monarchy). Luis Felipe I initially calmed the demands of the bourgeoisie, which obtained greater social freedoms. During these years he also launched the French Conquest of Algeria, the first major campaign in Africa since the failed Egyptian expedition of 1798. However, the monarchy could not be sustained for long.
Second Republic and Empire
In 1848, general unrest led to a new revolution and the end of the July Monarchy. The abolition of slavery, the death penalty, and the introduction of universal male suffrage, briefly enacted during the French Revolution, were re-enacted in 1848. Louis-Philippe abdicated on February 24, and the Second French Republic was proclaimed after an intense debate. However, this was brief. On December 2, 1852, the President of the Republic, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon I's nephew, carried out a coup and proclaimed himself Emperor of the Second French Empire, as Napoleon III.
His reign, although sometimes authoritarian, allowed the country to have a considerable development in means of transportation. The economic boom prospered and the banking network increased, signing a free trade treaty with England in 1860 that promotes international trade. However foreign policy had a series of important failures such as the second French intervention in Mexico and above all the resounding defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Napoleon III was captured on September 1, 1870; His regime collapsed almost immediately. Three days later, on September 4, the French Third Republic was proclaimed.
Contemporary France
Third French Republic
Defeat in the Franco-Prussian War precipitated the proclamation of the French Third Republic. France had colonial possessions in various parts of the world, from the early 17th century to the 1960s. In the XIX and XX, their colonial empire was the second largest in the world after the British Empire. At its peak, between 1919 and 1939, the second French colonial empire spanned 12,347,000 square kilometers of land. Including metropolitan France, the total land area under French sovereignty reached up to 11.5 million km2 in the 1920s and 1930s, which would equal 8.53% of the land area of the planet.
In August 1914, after the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian crown, the Western Front of World War I opened after the German army invaded Belgium and Luxembourg, managing to gain military control of the most industrial areas important in France. Although France ultimately ended up as one of the victorious powers of World War I, it suffered enormous human and material losses that weakened it in the decades that followed. The 1930s were marked by a variety of social reforms introduced by the Popular Front government.
France and the United Kingdom declared war on Nazi Germany on September 3, 1939 under a treaty signed with Poland, whose territory had been invaded by the Wehrmacht, the German army. At the beginning of World War II, France carried out a series of unsuccessful rescue campaigns in Norway, Belgium and the Netherlands between 1939 and 1940. After the lightning attack by Nazi Germany and its ally, Fascist Italy, between May and June 1940, the French political leadership signed the Armistice on June 22, 1940. The Germans established an authoritarian regime under the tutelage of Marshal Philippe Pétain known as Vichy France, which adopted a policy of collaboration with Nazi Germany. Opponents of the regime formed the Free French state outside of France, supported the French resistance, and added more and more colonial territories to their cause. During 1945, the Allies and the French resistance were victorious against the Axis powers and French sovereignty was restored with the establishment of the Provisional Government of the French Republic (GPRF). This provisional government, established by Charles de Gaulle, aimed to continue the war against Germany and purge collaborators from his office. He also carried out several important reforms (expansion of women's suffrage, creation of a social security system, etc.).
French IV Republic
The GPRF laid the foundations for a new constitutional order that gave rise to the Fourth Republic, which experienced spectacular economic growth (les Trente Glorieuses). France was one of the founding members of NATO (1949). France attempted to regain control of French Indochina, but was defeated by the Viet Minh in 1954 at the climactic Battle of Dien Bien Phu. Just a few months later, France was faced with another anti-colonial conflict in Algeria. Systematic torture and repression, as well as extrajudicial executions carried out to maintain control of Algeria, then treated as an integral part of France and home to more than a million European settlers, devastated the country and came close to provoking a coup and a civil war.
V French Republic
The debate over maintaining control of Algeria, then the land of a million European settlers, weakened the country and led to near civil war. In 1958, the weak and unstable Fourth Republic gave way to the French Fifth Republic, which rests on a strong executive branch.
Charles de Gaulle took the extreme path of warfare. The Algerian war of independence and the civil war that broke out in Algeria between the supporters of leaving the colony and the settlers who clung to maintaining the French presence, ended in 1962, with the Evian declaration that included the holding of a referendum of self determination. The independence of Algeria had a high price: the great number of victims of the Algerian population. There were between half a million and one million deaths and more than 2 million internally displaced Algerians. A remnant of the colonial empire is the French overseas departments and territories. General De Gaulle also had to face another tough test in May 1968, from which he emerged victorious in the early elections called in June of the same year.
In 1981, socialist François Mitterrand was elected president of France and ruled from 1981 to 1995. He was succeeded by conservative Jacques Chirac, who ruled from 1995 to 2007, the year his interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, was elected President. France supported the United States in the first Gulf War (1990), as well as in the overthrow of the Taliban regime. The reconciliation and cooperation of France with Germany proved the central line to the political and economic integration of the European Union of development, including the introduction of the euro in January 1999. France was in the forefront of the European member states of the union that they were trying to exploit the momentum of the monetary union to create a political European union, with a unified defense and apparatus and more capable in security.
Dominique de Villepin, at the head of French diplomacy, led the bloc of countries that opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq, threatening to use his veto power in the Security Council, leading in the process to a cooling of relations with the administration of George W. Bush. The candidate of the conservative right, Nicolas Sarkozy, defeated Segolene Royal in the elections of May 6, 2007 to occupy the Presidency of the French Republic, succeeding Jacques Chirac. On May 6, 2012 Sarkozy was defeated in his aspiration to continue leading the government in the presidential elections for the socialist candidate François Hollande.
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Since the 1995 attacks on the Paris metro and RER, France has been the target of sporadic attacks by Islamist organizations, notably the Charlie Hebdo attack in January 2015, which led to the largest public gatherings of the history of France, bringing together 4.4 million people, the November 2015 attacks in Paris, which caused 130 deaths, the deadliest attack on French soil since World War II and the deadliest in the European Union since the 2004 Madrid train bombings, as well as the 2016 Nice truck bombing, which killed 87 people during Bastille Day celebrations. Operation Chammal, France's military efforts to contain ISIS, killed more than 1,000 ISIS troops between 2014 and 2015.
At the end of 2018, various protests and arrests took place in Paris related to the yellow vests movement, out of discontent with President Macron's fuel price policies.
Government and politics
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| Emmanuel Macron Chairman | Élisabeth Borne Prime Minister |
The current Constitution of France (Constitution of the Fifth Republic) was approved by referendum on September 28, 1958. With its implementation, the position of President of the Republic notably strengthened his authority over the executive branch, previously embodied in the prime minister and the government, becoming the true representative of the Executive in relation to parliament. According to the Constitution, the president is elected by direct suffrage for a period of five years (originally seven years). The president's arbitration ensures the regular functioning and balance of public powers. The president appoints the prime minister, who presides over the Cabinet, commands the armed forces, and concludes treaties. The cabinet or council of ministers is appointed by the president on the proposal of the prime minister. This government organization is known as a semi-presidential republic.
The National Assembly is the main legislative body. Its 577 deputies are directly elected for a five-year term and all seats are voted for in each election. The other chamber is the Senate, whose 321 senators are elected by an electoral college (it is indirect suffrage) and remain in office for nine years. One third of the Senate is renewed every three years. The legislative powers of the senate are limited, and the national assembly has the final say in the event of a dispute between the two chambers. The government has strong influence over the parliamentary agenda. There is also a Constitutional Council (9 members), which ensures control of the constitutionality of laws and resolves electoral disputes. All those over 18 years of age are French citizens.
Foreign Relations
France is a founding member of the United Nations and is one of the permanent members of the UN Security Council with veto power. In 2015, it was classified as «the best connected State in the world» for being the one that integrates the most international institutions; among them, the G7, the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Pacific Community (SPC) and the Indian Ocean Commission (IOC). It is an associate member of the Association of Caribbean States (ACS) and the main member of the Organization Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), made up of 84 French-speaking countries.
As an important center of international relations, France is the third country with the highest number of diplomatic missions, only surpassed by China and the United States, which are much more populous. It is also home to the headquarters of several international organizations, such as the OECD, UNESCO, Interpol, the International Bureau of Weights and Measures and the OIF.
France is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), but under President de Gaulle excluded itself from joint military command, in protest of the special relationship between the United States and Great Britain, and to preserve the independence of French foreign and security policy. Under Nicolas Sarkozy, France rejoined NATO's joint military command on April 4, 2009.
France invests in the development of low-income countries, especially in Africa. Official attendance represented 0.36% of France's gross national product in 2014.
European Union
Post-war French foreign policy has been largely marked by membership of the European Union, of which it was a founding member. Since the 1960s, France has developed close ties with reunited Germany to become the most influential driving force in the EU. In the 1960s, France tried to exclude the British from the process of European unification, seeking to build its own position. in continental Europe. However, since 1904, France has maintained an Entente Cordiale with the United Kingdom, and ties between the countries have been strengthened, especially in the military field.
The Schuman Declaration is the informal title of the speech delivered by the French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman on May 9, 1950 in which —as officially recognized by the European Union—the first step towards the formation of this organization was taken by proposing that coal and steel from Germany and France (and other acceding countries) be placed under joint administration.
The Treaty of Paris, signed on April 18, 1951, between Belgium, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, established the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) which was later part, first, from the European Communities, and then from the European Union. The French have the second largest representation in the European Parliament, by virtue of their number of inhabitants; In addition, the French Jean-Claude Trichet was president of the European Central Bank and Jacques Barrot was one of the vice-presidents of the European Commission for the period 2004-2009.
Strasbourg is the seat of the European Parliament; plenary sessions are held there one week each month. For this reason, the city is considered the second capital of the EU after Brussels, where the deputies are the rest of the time. The city is also home to the Eurocorps Central Command and the Europol Information Center.
On July 14, 2007, troops from the 27 countries of the European Union paraded together for the first time on the Champs-Élysées in Paris on the occasion of the French national holiday in a ceremony led by Sarkozy. The French presidency of the Council of The European Union in the second half of 2008 was framed within the system of rotating administration of said institution. It was expected that at the end of the administration the European Treaty of Lisbon would enter into force, allowing the appointment of the first permanent president of the Union, but this was not possible since the document was not ratified by all the states.
In 2017 Emmanuel Macron was one of the main leaders of the project to re-found the European Union.
Armed Forces
The French Armed Forces (Forces armées françaises) are the military and paramilitary forces of France, under the command of the President of the Republic as supreme commander. They are made up of the Army (Armée de Terre), the National Navy (Marine Nationale, formerly called the Armée de Mer), the Army of Air and Space (Armée de l'Air et de l'Espace), and the Military Police called the National Gendarmerie (Gendarmerie nationale), which also It performs civil police functions in rural areas of France. Together, they are among the largest armed forces in the world and the largest in the EU. According to a 2018 study by Credit Suisse, the French Armed Forces are ranked as the sixth most powerful army in the world, and the most powerful in Europe, behind only Russia.
Although the Gendarmerie is an integral part of the French armed forces (the gendarmes are career soldiers), and therefore depends on the Ministry of the Armed Forces, it is operationally attached to the Ministry of the Interior with regard to its functions of civilian police.
When acting as general police, the Gendarmerie encompasses the anti-terrorist units of the Parachute Intervention Squad of the National Gendarmerie (Escadron Parachutiste d'Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale), the Intervention Group of the National Gendarmerie (Groupe d'Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale) the Search Sections of the National Gendarmerie (Sections de Recherche de la Gendarmerie Nationale), in charge of the criminal investigations, and the Mobile Brigades of the National Gendarmerie (Brigades mobiles de la Gendarmerie Nationale, or, in short, Gendarmerie mobile), which are tasked with maintaining the public order.
The following special units also form part of the Gendarmerie: the Republican Guard (Garde républicaine), which protects the public buildings that house the main French institutions, the Maritime Gendarmerie (Gendarmerie maritime ), which acts as the Coast Guard, and the Social Security Service (Prévôté), which acts as a branch of the Military Police of the Gendarmerie.
As for French intelligence units, the General Directorate for External Security (Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure) is considered a component of the Armed Forces under the authority of the Ministry of Defence. The other, the Central Directorate of Internal Intelligence (Direction centrale du renseignement intérieur) is a division of the National Police Corps (Direction générale de la Police Nationale), and therefore reports directly to the Ministry of the Interior.. Since 1997 there is no national recruitment.
France has a special military corps, the French Foreign Legion, founded in 1830, consisting of foreign citizens from more than 140 countries who are willing to serve in the French Armed Forces and who become French citizens at the end of your period of service. The only other countries with similar units are Spain (the Spanish Foreign Legion, called Tercio, was founded in 1920) and Luxembourg (foreigners can serve in the National Army as long as they speak Luxembourgish).
France has been a recognized nuclear state since 1960. It has signed and ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and acceded to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. France's annual military spending in 2018 was $63.8 billion, or 2.3% of its GDP, making it the fifth country in the world that spends the most on weapons, after the United States, China, Saudi Arabia and India.
French nuclear deterrence, (formerly known as "Force de frappe"), is based on total independence. The current French nuclear force consists of four Triomphant-class submarines equipped with submarine-launched ballistic missiles. In addition to the submarine fleet, France has an estimated 60 medium-range air-to-surface missiles with nuclear warheads, of which about 50 are deployed by the Air and Space Force with the Mirage long-range nuclear attack aircraft. 2000N, while some 10 are deployed by the French Navy's Super Étendard Modernisé (SEM) attack aircraft, operating from the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle. The new Rafale F3s will progressively replace all Mirage 2000Ns and SEMs in the nuclear strike role with the upgraded nuclear-tipped ASMP-A missile.
France has important military industries and one of the largest aerospace industries in the world. Its industries have produced equipment such as the Dassault Rafale fighter, the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier, the Exocet missile, and the Leclerc tank, among others. Despite having withdrawn from the Eurofighter project, France is actively investing in joint European projects such as the Eurocopter Tiger, multi-role frigates, the nEUROn UCAV demonstrator and the Airbus A400M. France is a major arms seller, with most designs in its arsenal available for the export market, with the notable exception of nuclear-powered devices.
France has steadily developed its cybersecurity capabilities, which are regularly ranked among the strongest of any nation in the world.
The Bastille Day military parade, which is held in Paris every July 14 on the occasion of the French national holiday, called Bastille Day in English-speaking countries (called in France Fête nationale), is the oldest and largest regular military parade in Europe.
Human rights
In terms of human rights, regarding membership of the seven bodies of the International Bill of Human Rights, which include the Human Rights Committee (HRC), France has signed or ratified:
.svg){kind=small} France | International treaties | ||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CESCR | CCPR | CERD | CED | CEDAW | CAT | CRC | MWC | CRPD | |||||||||
| CESCR | CESCR-OP | CCPR | CCPR-OP1 | CCPR-OP2-DP | CEDAW | CEDAW-OP | CAT | CAT-OP | CRC | CRC-OP-AC | CRC-OP-SC | CRPD | CRPD-OP | ||||
| Pertenence |   |  | | |  | | | | | | | |  | | | | |
 Signed and ratified,  signed, but not ratified,  neither signed nor ratified,  without information,  it has agreed to sign and ratify the body concerned, but also recognizes the competence to receive and process individual communications from the competent bodies. | |||||||||||||||||
Status of major international human rights instruments
Territorial organization
| Regions of France since 2015 |
|---|
 Alta France Island of France Great East Burgundy-Franco County Centro-Valle de Loire Countries of the Loire Britain Normandy Auvergne-Ródano-Alpes New Aquitaine Occitania Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur Corsica French Guiana Guadalupe Martinique Mayotte Meeting Belgium Luxembourg Germany Switzerland Italy United Kingdom Andorra Brazil Suriname Spain Monaco Canal de la Mancha Bay of Vizcaya Mar deLiguria Mediterranean Sea |
France is administratively divided into regions, departments, districts, cantons, and communes (or communes). Additionally, it has communities, territories and dependencies. The largest department is French Guiana with 91,000 km².
The 18 regions and their corresponding 101 departments are from the metropolis or overseas.
Metropolitan territorial division
- 13 regions (in French) régions): France is divided into 18 regions, of which 13 are in the metropolis. Although it is the main division, France is a unitary country and the regions do not have legislative or executive autonomy, they receive from the State a consistent part of national taxes that can be disposed of and distributed according to their needs.
- 96 departments (in French) départements): are governed by a General Council elected for six years by direct suffrage. They were created in 1790 so that everyone could go on a horse day at most to their representatives. Each has a prefect.
- 329 districts (in French) arrondissements): Each department is divided into several districts, each with its subprefect. Its function is to help the prefect of the department.
- 3879 cantons: it is a smaller division, especially for electoral purposes.
- 36 571 communes: equivalent to the municipality. In the city of Paris, they receive the name of arrondissements.
- Intercommunities of France (in French) intercommunautés): equivalent to a commonwealth, they gather in one department several communes.
Overseas territories and collectivities
In addition to the 18 regions and 101 departments, the French Republic has five overseas collectivities (French Polynesia, Saint Barthélemy, Saint Martin, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, and Wallis and Futuna), one sui generis collectivity (New Caledonia), an overseas territory (French Southern and Antarctic Lands) and two private possessions under direct government authority: Clipperton Island and the French domain of Saint Helena.
The overseas communities and territories are part of the French Republic, but are not part of the European Union or its fiscal space (with the exception of Saint Barthélemy, which separated from Guadeloupe in 2007). The Pacific Collectivities (COM) of French Polynesia, Wallis and Futuna and New Caledonia continue to use the CFP franc, whose value is strictly linked to that of the euro. Instead, the five overseas regions used the French franc and now use the euro.
| Name | Constitutional status | Capital |
|---|---|---|
| Clipperton Island
| Private property of the State under the direct authority of the French government. | Uninhabited |
| French Domains of St. Helena
| Private property of the State under the administration of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. | Uninhabited |
French Polynesia French Polynesia
| Designated as an overseas country (pays d'outre-mer o POM), status is the same
that of an overseas collectivity. | Papeete |
 Southern and French Antarctic Lands
| Overseas Territoryterritoire d'outre-mer or TOM). | Port-aux-Français |
 New Caledonia
| Collective sui generis. | Numea |
| San Bartolomé
| Overseas collectivity (collectivité d'outre-mer or COM) | Gustavia |
| San Martín
| Overseas collectivité d'outre-mer or COM | Marigot |
| San Pedro and Miquelón
| Overseas collectivity (collectivité d'outre-mer o COM). It's still called
collectivité territoriale. | Saint-Pierre |
 Wallis and Futuna
| Overseas collectivity (collectivité d'outre-mer o COM). It's still called territoire. | Mata-Utu |
Geography
French territory covers an area of 675,417 km², which represents 0.50% of the planet's landmass (ranked 43rd in the world). Metropolitan France, that is, European, has 551,500 km², while Overseas France has another 123,722 km² (excluding Adélie Land due to the Antarctic Treaty in 1959 that suspended the recognition of all sovereignties in said region). It is the largest country in Western Europe and the European Union (with about 1/5 of the area of the EU). Its largest islands are New Caledonia, Corsica, Kerguelen, Réunion, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Tahiti and Mayotte.
The political demarcation of continental European France rests on its "natural borders" these being (counterclockwise): the North Sea, the English Channel, the Atlantic Ocean (Bay of Biscay); the Pyrenees; the Mediterranean Sea (Gulf of Leon, French Riviera); the Alps; the Jura mountains; the Rhine River. The Rhine is a border only in part of its course, from which point to the North Sea, there are no geographical accidents that "naturally" delimit the border with Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany. The most important French island in Europe is Corsica, located in the Mediterranean Sea. In metropolitan France, the borders extend for 2,889 km and the coastline for another 3,427 km. In Africa, Asia, Oceania, North America and the Caribbean, the French territory is an island. French Guiana (in South America) is the only continental territory outside of Europe, bordered on the north by the Atlantic Ocean (378 km); to the west with Suriname (510 km), to the east with Brazil (673 km). Most of the island of Saint Martin (in the Caribbean Sea) is French, having a southern border with the Netherlands Antilles (10.2 km).
The territory of France, and its metropolitan or continental part, is bordered, to the south, by the Mediterranean Sea and Monaco (4.4 km); to the southwest, with Spain (623 km), Andorra (56.6 km) and the Cantabrian Sea; to the west, with the Atlantic Ocean; to the north, with the English Channel, the United Kingdom (22.6 m, in the middle of the submarine tunnel that joins them), the North Sea and Belgium (620 km), and to the east, with Luxembourg (73 km), Germany (451 km), Switzerland (573 km) and Italy (488 km). Its European island territory includes the island of Corsica, in the western Mediterranean, and various coastal archipelagos in the Atlantic Ocean. In America, French Guiana is the territory of France, which borders Brazil (673 km) and Suriname (510 km), as well as most of the island of Saint Martin, which borders the Dutch part of Sint Marteen (10.2 km)., and the islands and archipelagos of Martinique, Guadeloupe, Saint Barthélemy, and Saint Pierre and Miquelon. In the Indian Ocean it has the islands of Mayotte and Réunion, as well as the archipelagos of French Polynesia, Wallis and Futuna and New Caledonia in the Pacific Ocean. The uninhabited territories of France are the Clipperton Island atoll, in the eastern Pacific, and the French Southern Lands (Kerguelen and several others in the South Indian Ocean) and the so-called French Antarctic Lands (Adelie Land and Dumont D'Urville Base in the Antarctica). Worldwide, it is the 2nd country with the largest extension of territorial sea (11 million km²).
France has part of the Pyrenees (border with Spain and Andorra) and the Alps (border with Italy), both to the south. Other mountainous massifs are the Jura (on the border with Switzerland), the Ardennes, the Massif Central and the Vosges mountain range. 4810.06 meters Mont Blanc in the Alps is the highest peak in Western Europe and the European Union. The lowest point in the country is in the delta of the Rhone River, with 2 m.b.n.m. The territory also has coastal plains to the north and west of the country.
Biodiversity and soil
France has very diverse landscapes, with coastlines, mountain ranges, plains, forests. Most of the metropolitan territory of France corresponds to the temperate broad-leaved forest biome, although temperate coniferous forest in the Alps and Mediterranean forest in the southeast are also present. The number of deer and deer in the wild is increasing thanks to policies aimed at this objective, in addition to guaranteeing the protection of non-domestic autochthonous species, with the creation of parks and natural reserves, as well as the reintroduction of species that were exterminated in the country (brown bear, lynx and European bison, among others).
In metropolitan France there are 136 species of trees, which is exceptional for a European country. The plant species cultivated for direct human consumption and for agro-industrial production occupy large spaces of the French surface, highlighting the vine and wheat among many others. Intensive breeding and exploitation of cattle, pigs, sheep, goats and horses is practiced. Smaller species such as rabbits and poultry also abound.
Agricultural production represents 56% (of which farmland is 33%, permanent crops 3%, and permanent pastures 20%), forest mass 28%, and “others” the 16%. Forests stretch over the surface of metropolitan France to cover more than 140,000 kilometers. Specially protected areas make up 8% of the national territory. The subsoil provides abundant construction materials (gravel, sand, lime) and raw materials (kaolin, talc, sulfur, potash), but is poor in energy and mineral products. French Guiana, for its part, is part of the Guayano-Venezuelan Massif, having 90% of its territory covered by the tropical forest.
Hydrology and coasts
Inland waters cover 0.26% of the French continental surface. The most important rivers in France are, on the Atlantic side: Loire, Garonne, Dordogne (in the Atlantic Ocean), and Seine (in the English Channel). On the Mediterranean slope, the Rhône (in the Gulf of Lion), with its tributary, the Saone. It also owns a good part of the basins of the Rhine, Meuse, Moselle and Scheldt rivers (which flow into the North Sea). The longest inland river is the Loire, with more than 1,000 km. The largest lake is Geneva (582 km²).
France has 3,427 km of coastline in its metropolitan area (4,853 km including overseas territories) and ranks second in fishery production in the EU (excluding the UK). In total, the French coasts are washed by the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific oceans. France's maritime zone is 12 miles from the coast, and its exclusive economic zone extends up to 200 miles from the coast (11 million km²).
Climate
In general, metropolitan France enjoys a temperate climate. The weather is usually mild, but there are big differences between seasons and regions.
France's climate is temperate, but it is divided into four distinct climate zones. The oceanic climate of the French west provides average rainfall spread over many days and modest annual temperature variations (Brittany, Normandy, Loire Atlantique, Loire Valley). The continental climate of central and eastern France is home to cold winters and hot summers (Gran Est region). The Mediterranean climate of south-eastern France is responsible for hot, dry summers, with rain from October to April (when the weather is warm). humid but mild) and plenty of sunshine all year round (Provence, Côte d'Azur and Corsica). Above 600-800 m altitude, the montane climate brings heavy rainfall and snow for three to six months of the year.
Annual rainfall in France ranges from 635mm to 1016mm and occurs evenly throughout the year. The Atlantic coast receives the highest rainfall, while the eastern mountains accumulate large deposits of snow. Annual sunshine in France ranges from 1,600 to more than 2,800 hours, with the longest days in June and the shortest in December.
Tropical climate in Bora Bora (French Polynesia).
Alpine climate in the French Alps.
Oceanic climate and sandy beaches in Arcachon Bay.
Mediterranean climate on the island of Corsica.
Thanks to its geographical location and high level of economic development, France is somewhat less affected by climate change than many other parts of the world. However, France has a number of regions and populations that are at risk of being disproportionately affected by climate change. Many parts of the French territories are poised to experience more frequent heat waves, floods, forest fires and droughts, combined with global sea level rise and ocean acidification.
Economy
France has a developed, high-income mixed economy, characterized by significant state involvement, economic diversity, a skilled workforce and a high degree of innovation. For nearly two centuries, the French economy has consistently been among the ten largest in the world; it is currently the ninth in the world in purchasing power parity, the seventh in nominal GDP and the second in the European Union in both measurements. France is considered an economic power, as it is part of the Group of Seven major industrialized countries, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the Group of Twenty largest economies.
The French economy is highly diversified; services represent two thirds of the active population and GDP, while the industrial sector represents one fifth of GDP and a similar proportion of employment. France is the third largest manufacturing country in Europe, behind Germany and Italy, and ranks eighth in the world for its share of world manufacturing production, with 1.9%. Less than 2% of GDP is generated by the primary sector, i.e. agriculture; however, France's agricultural sector is among the largest in value and leads the EU in terms of overall production.
In 2018, France was the fifth largest trading nation in the world and second in Europe, with the value of exports representing more than a fifth of GDP. Its membership of the eurozone and the broader European single market facilitates access to capital, goods, services and skilled labor. Despite protectionist policies on certain industries, especially agriculture, France has generally played a leading role in promoting free trade and commercial integration in Europe to improve their economy. In 2019, it ranked first in Europe and 13th in the world in foreign direct investment, with European countries and the United States being the main sources. According to the Bank of France, the main recipients of FDI were manufacturing, the sector real estate, finance and insurance. The Paris region has the highest concentration of multinational companies in Europe.
France announced the creation of its 25th unicorn in early 2022, surpassing the French government's goal of having 25 unicorns by 2025. Fintechs are an integral part of Europe, and the French ecosystem of 20,000 French startups records some of the most successful larger fundraising rounds.
The e-commerce sector (products and services) exceeded 129 billion euros in 2021. Many retailers increased their digitization during 2020 to offer consumers the possibility to continue shopping. Consumers are now in favor of this approach by retailers, including their local stores. It appears that French consumers who made their way online during the lockdowns will continue to shop online. In France, 52% of businesses that sell online are growing, compared to 39% of businesses that only operate offline.
Under the doctrine of Dirigisme, the government has historically played an important role in the economy; Policies such as indicative planning and nationalization are credited with contributing to three decades of unprecedented post-war economic growth, known as the Trente Glorieuses. At its peak, in 1982, the public sector accounted for one-fifth of industrial employment and more than four-fifths of the credit market. Beginning in the late 20th century, France relaxed regulations and state involvement in the economy, and most major companies are now privately owned; state ownership only dominates transport, defense and broadcasting. Policies aimed at promoting economic dynamism and privatization have improved France's economic position globally: it is among the 10 most innovative countries in the world in the Index Bloomberg Innovation Awards 2020, and 15th most competitive, according to the 2019 Global Competitiveness Report (up two spots from 2018).
According to the IMF, France ranks 30th in GDP per capita, with about $45,000 per inhabitant. It ranks 23rd in the Human Development Index, indicating very high human development. Public corruption is one of the lowest in the world, with France consistently among the 30 least corrupt countries since the Corruption Perceptions Index began in 2012; in 2021 it was ranked 22nd, up one place from the previous year. France is the second European country that spends the most on research and development, with more than 2% of GDP; globally, it ranks 12th.
Financial services, banking and insurance are an important part of the economy. AXA is the second largest insurance company in the world by total non-bank assets as of 2020. As of 2011, the three largest financial institutions cooperatively owned by its clients were French: Crédit Agricole, Groupe Caisse D'Epargne and Groupe Caisse D' 39;Épargne. According to a 2020 report by S&P Global Market Intelligence, major French banks, BNP Paribas and Crédit Agricole, are among the world's 10 largest banks by assets, with Société Générale and Groupe BPCE occupying the top 10 positions. 17 and 19, respectively.
The Paris Stock Exchange is one of the oldest in the world, created by Louis XV in 1724. In 2000 it merged with its counterparts in Amsterdam and Brussels to form Euronext, which in 2007 merged with the New York Stock Exchange to form NYSE Euronext, the world's largest stock exchange. Euronext Paris, the French arm of NYSE Euronext, is the second largest stock market in Europe, behind the London Stock Exchange.
Labor market
France has long suffered from a relatively high unemployment rate, even during years when its macroeconomic performance compared favorably with other advanced economies. The French employment rate for the working-age population is one of the lowest in the OECD countries: in 2020, only 64.4% of the French population of working age was employed, compared to 77% in Japan, 76.1% in Germany and 75, 4% for the UK, but the French employment rate was higher than the US, which stood at 62.5%.
Since his election in 2017, Emmanuel Macron has introduced several labor market reforms that were successful in lowering the unemployment rate before the global recession set in by the COVID-19 pandemic. In late 2019, the France's unemployment rate, while still high compared to other developed economies, was the lowest in a decade.
During the 2000s and 2010s, classical liberal and Keynesian economists sought different solutions to the unemployment problem in France. The theories of Keynesian economists led to the introduction of the 35-hour workweek law in 1999. Between 2004 and 2008, the government tried to combat unemployment with supply-side reforms, but was met with strong resistance; The contrat nouvelle embauche and the contrat première embauche (which allowed for more flexible contracts) were of particular concern, and both were eventually repealed. The Sarkozy government used the revenu de solidarité active (insertion benefits) to offset the negative effect of the revenu minimum d'insertion (unemployment benefits that do not depend on contributions, as opposed to normal unemployment benefits in France) over the incentive to accept even jobs insufficient to earn a living. Neoliberal economists attribute the low employment rate, especially evident among young people, to high minimum wages that would prevent low-productivity workers from easily entering the labor market.
A December 2012 New York Times article reported on a "floating generation" in France that was among the 14 million unemployed young Europeans documented by the Eurofound research agency. floating generation was blamed on a dysfunctional system: “an elitist educational tradition that fails to integrate graduates into the workforce, a rigid labor market that is difficult for newcomers to access, and a tax system that makes companies pay expensive to hire full-time employees and difficult and expensive to fire."
In early April 2014, employer federations and unions negotiated an agreement with employers in the technology and consulting sectors, as employees had been experiencing an extension of their working time through communication by smartphone outside of official working hours. Under a new legally binding employment agreement, some 250,000 employees will avoid handling work-related matters during their free time, and their employers, in turn, will refrain from interacting with staff during this time.
Every day, some 80,000 French citizens commute to work in neighboring Luxembourg, making them the largest group of cross-border workers in the entire European Union. They are attracted by the much higher wages for different work groups than in their own country and the lack of skilled labor in the thriving Luxembourg economy.
Foreign trade
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In 2018, France was the fifth largest trading nation in the world, as well as the second in Europe (after Germany). Its foreign trade balance in goods had been in surplus from 1992 to 2001, reaching $25.4 billion in 1998; however, the French trade balance was affected by the economic recession and went into the red in 2000, reaching a deficit of 15 billion dollars in 2003. Total trade in 1998 amounted to 730 billion dollars, that is, the 50% of GDP -imports plus exports of goods and services-. Trade with the countries of the European Union represents 54% of French trade.
In 1998, trade between the US and France was about $47 billion, in goods alone. According to Trading Economics, US exports accounted for 4.9% - about $27.91 billion. Of France's total imports. Industrial chemicals, aircraft and engines, electronic components, telecommunications, software, computers and peripherals, analytical and scientific instruments, medical instruments and supplies, broadcast equipment and programming, and franchising from the United States are particularly attractive to French importers. China is also important for France's imports, amounting to $41.15 billion.
The main French exports are machinery, vehicles, electrical machinery, pharmaceuticals, plastics, concoctions, perfumery and mineral fuels.
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Agriculture
France has historically been one of the world's major agricultural centers and remains a «world agricultural powerhouse». Nicknamed «the granary of the old continent», more than half of its total area is farmland, of which 45% is dedicated to permanent crops such as cereals. The diversity of its climate, extensive farmland, modern agricultural technology and EU subsidies have made the country Europe's leading agricultural producer and exporter, accounting for one fifth of EU agricultural production, including and more than a third of its oilseeds, cereals and wine. In 2017, France was the first country in Europe in beef and cereals; the second in dairy products and aquaculture; and third in poultry, fruit, vegetables and manufactured chocolate products. France has the largest livestock herd in the EU, with 18-19 million head.
France is the world's sixth largest exporter of agricultural products, with a trade surplus of more than €7.4 billion. Its main agricultural exports are wheat, poultry, dairy products, beef and pork, and internationally recognized brands, especially beverages. France is the fifth largest wheat-producing country, after China, India, Russia and the United States, all of them with considerable size. It is the world's leading exporter of spring water natural, flax, malt and potatoes. In 2020, France exported more than 61,000 million euros in agricultural products.
France was one of the earliest centers of viticulture, dating back to at least the VI century BC. It is the second world producer of wine, with many varieties that enjoy world fame, such as Champagne and Bordeaux; domestic consumption is also high, especially Rosé. France produces rum mainly from the overseas territories, such as Martinique, Guadeloupe and La Réunion.
Compared to other developed countries, agriculture is an important sector of the French economy: 3.8% of the active population is employed in agriculture, while the total agri-food industry represented 4.2% of French GDP in 2005. France remains the largest recipient of EU agricultural subsidies, receiving an annual average of €8 billion from 2007 to 2019.
Tourism
With 89 million international tourist arrivals in 2018, France is the number one tourist destination in the world, ahead of Spain (83 million) and the United States (80 million). In addition, tourism brings France 63.8 billion dollars in revenue. The most popular tourist places are (annual visitors) Eiffel Tower (6.2 million), Versailles Castle (2.8 million), National Museum of Natural History (2 million), Pont du Gard (1.5 million), Arc de Triomphe (1.2 million), Mont Saint-Michel (1 million), Sainte-Chapelle (683,000), Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg (549,000), Puy de Dôme (500,000), Musée Picasso (441,000) and Carcassonne (362,000).
Paris Region
France, and especially Paris, has some of the largest and most renowned museums in the world, such as the Louvre, which is the most visited art museum in the world (5.7 million), the Musée d'Orsay (2.1 million), dedicated mainly to Impressionism, the Musée de l'Orangerie (1.02 million), which houses eight large murals of Water Lilies by Claude Monet, as well as the Center Georges Pompidou (1.2 million), dedicated to art contemporary. Disneyland Paris is the most popular theme park in Europe, with a combined 15 million visitors to Disneyland Park and Walt Disney Studios Park in 2009.
French Riviera
With more than 10 million tourists a year, the French Riviera (French: Côte d'Azur), in southeastern France, is the country's second largest tourist destination, after of the Paris region. It has 300 sunny days a year, 115 kilometers of coastline and beaches, 18 golf courses, 14 ski resorts and 3,000 restaurants. Each year, the Côte d'Azur hosts 50% of the fleet Super Yacht World Cup.
Castles
With 6 million tourists a year, the castles of the Loire Valley (in French: châteaux) and the Loire Valley itself are the third tourist destination in France; This place, declared a World Heritage Site, stands out for its architectural heritage, in its historic cities but above all in its castles, such as those of Amboise, Chambord, d'Ussé, Villandry, Chenonceaux and Montsoreau. Chantilly, Versailles and Vaux-le-Vicomte, all three located near Paris, are also visitor attractions.
Other protected areas
France has 37 sites inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List and has cities of great cultural interest, beaches and sea resorts, ski resorts, as well as rural regions that many enjoy for their beauty and tranquility (Green tourism). Small, picturesque French villages are promoted through the association Les Plus Beaux Villages de France (literally "the most beautiful villages in France"). The "remarkable gardens" label is a list of the more than 200 gardens classified by the Ministry of Culture. This label is intended to protect and promote remarkable gardens and parks. France attracts many religious pilgrims on their way to Santiago, or to Lourdes, a city in the Hautes-Pyrénées that receives several million visitors a year.
Science and technology
Since the Middle Ages, France has contributed greatly to scientific and technological achievements. In the early 11th century century, Pope Sylvester II, of French origin, reintroduced the abacus and the armillary sphere, and introduced the Arabic numerals and clocks in much of Europe. The University of Paris, founded in the mid-12th century, is still one of the most important academic institutions in the Western world. In the 17th century, the mathematician Rene Descartes pioneered rationalism as method for acquiring scientific knowledge, while Blaise Pascal became famous for his work on probability and fluid mechanics; both were key figures in the Scientific Revolution, which flourished in Europe during this period. The French Academy of Sciences, founded in the mid-XVII century by Louis XIV to encourage and protect French scientific research, was one of the first national scientific institutions in history; it was at the forefront of scientific advances in Europe for the next two centuries.
The Age of Enlightenment was marked by the work of the biologist Buffon, one of the first naturalists to recognize ecological succession, and the chemist Lavoisier, who discovered the role of oxygen in combustion. Diderot and D'Alembert published the Encyclopédie, which was intended to give the public access to "useful knowledge" that could be applied to everyday life. The XIX witnessed spectacular scientific developments in France: Augustin Fresnel founded modern optics, Sadi Carnot laid the foundations of thermodynamics, and Louis Pasteur was the pioneer of microbiology. Other eminent French scientists of the time have their names inscribed on the Eiffel Tower.
Famous French scientists of the 20th century include the mathematician and physicist Henri Poincaré; the physicists Henri Becquerel, Pierre and Marie Curie, who are still famous for their work on radioactivity; physicist Paul Langevin; and the virologist Luc Montagnier, co-discoverer of HIV-AIDS. The hand transplant was developed in Lyon in 1998 by an international team including Jean-Michel Dubernard, who subsequently successfully performed the first double hand transplant. Telesurgery was first performed by French surgeons led by Jacques Marescaux on September 7, 2001 across the Atlantic Ocean. Dr. Bernard Devauchelle first performed a face transplant on November 27, 2005.
France was the fourth country to achieve nuclear capability and has the world's third largest arsenal of nuclear weapons; it is also a leader in civilian nuclear technology. France was the third nation, after the Soviet Union and the United States, to launch its own space satellite, and the first to establish a commercial launch service provider, Arianespace. The French national space program, CNES, is the third oldest in the world and the oldest, largest and most active in Europe. France is a founding member of the European Space Agency (ESA), to which it contributes more than a quarter of its budget, the largest of all Member States. ESA is headquartered in Paris, its main spaceport in French Guiana (Kourou) and uses the French-made Ariane 5 as its main launch vehicle. Airbus, a leading aerospace company and the world's largest aircraft manufacturer, was formed in part from the French company Aérospatiale; its primary commercial aircraft business is conducted through its French division, Airbus S.A.S.
France is also home to major international research facilities, such as the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, the Laue-Langevin Institute and Minatec, Europe's leading research center for nanotechnology. It is also a leading member of CERN, which runs the world's largest particle physics laboratory and is its third largest contributor. France was a pioneer and hosts ITER, an international effort to develop nuclear fusion power, which is the world's largest megaproject.
The TGV, developed by the French national railway company, SNCF, is a high-speed train that holds a number of world speed records; in 2007, it became the fastest wheeled commercial train, reaching a speed of 574.8 km/h. As of 2021, it is the third fastest train in the world, second only to maglev models. Currently, Western Europe has a network of TGV lines.
The Center National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), the state research agency, is the largest research institute in Europe and one of the most prominent internationally; according to the 2020 Nature Index, it ranks fourth in terms of the proportion of articles published in scientific journals worldwide, with France as a whole ranking sixth.
As of 2022, France ranks fourth in number of Nobel laureates, with 70 French laureates of at least one Nobel Prize. Twelve French mathematicians have received the International Mathematical Union's Fields Medal, considered the most prestigious award in this field, which represents a fifth of the total number of winners, and second place after the United States.
France ranks 11th in the 2021 Global Innovation Index, up from 12th in 2020 and 16th in 2019.
Infrastructure
Transportation
The French railway network, with 29,473 kilometers in 2008, is the second largest in Western Europe after the German one. It is managed by the SNCF, and high-speed trains include the Thalys, the Eurostar and the TGV, which travels at 320 km/h. The Eurostar, together with the Eurotunnel Shuttle, connects with the United Kingdom through the Channel Tunnel. There are rail connections with all other neighboring European countries, except Andorra. Intra-city connections are also well developed, with most large cities served by metro or tram services that complement the bus services.
There are approximately 1,027,183 kilometers of usable roads in France, making it the most extensive network on the European continent. The Paris region has the densest network of roads and motorways, connecting it to virtually everything the country. French highways also support significant international traffic, as they connect with cities in neighboring Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Andorra and Monaco. There is no annual registration tax or circulation tax; however, use of the highways, mostly privately owned, is through tolls, except in the vicinity of large municipalities. The new car market is dominated by national brands such as Renault, Peugeot and Citroën. France has the Millau Viaduct, the highest in the world, and has built many important bridges, including the Pont de Normandie. Gasoline and diesel cars and trucks cause much of the country's air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
There are approximately 170 airports in France. Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport, located on the outskirts of Paris, is the largest and busiest in the country, handling the vast majority of popular and commercial traffic and connecting Paris with practically all the great cities of the world. Air France is the national airline, although many private airlines offer domestic and international travel services. There are ten major ports in France, the largest of which is Marseille, which is also the largest bordering the Mediterranean Sea. 12,261 kilometers of waterways cross France, including the Canal du Midi, which connects the sea Mediterranean with the Atlantic Ocean through the Garonne River.
Energy
| Energy Mix of France (2020) |
|---|
| Fossils 9.4 % Wind 5.7 % Solar 2.1% Hydroelectric power supply 11.1% Nuclear 71.6 per cent Geothermal 0.02% |
France is the world's tenth largest producer of electricity. Électricité de France (EDF), majority-owned by the French government, is the country's leading producer and distributor of electricity, and one of the largest electricity utility companies in the world, ranking third in revenue globally. In 2018, EDF produced around a fifth of the European Union's electricity, mainly from nuclear power. As of 2021, France was the largest exporter of power in Europe, mainly to the United Kingdom and Italy, and the largest net exporter of electricity in the world.
Since the 1973 oil crisis, France has pursued a strong energy security policy, especially through heavy investment in nuclear energy. The French nuclear industry is now a leading sector in its economy and one of the pillars of its energy policy. France is the third largest producer of nuclear energy in the world, behind only the United States and China. With more than 60 nuclear reactors on its territory and another 15 under construction, the proportion of nuclear energy in the total production of its Electricity accounts for about 70%, making France the world leader in terms of this development.
Due to its overwhelming reliance on nuclear power, renewables have experienced relatively little growth compared to other Western countries. However, between 2008 and 2019, France's production capacity from renewables increased steadily and nearly doubled. Hydropower is by far the largest source, accounting for more than half of the country's renewables and contributing 11.1% of its electricity, the highest share in Europe after Norway and Turkey. Like nuclear power, most hydroelectric power plants, such as Eguzon, Étang de Soulcem and Lac de Vouglans, are managed by EDF.
France has made minimal but appreciable investments in other renewable energy sources. Due to its geography and extensive farmland, it has the second largest wind energy potential in Europe, and in 2017 it ranked eighth worldwide in installed wind capacity. In terms of solar energy, France ranked in 2015 the Ranked seventh in the world for solar photovoltaic installation capacity. In 2019, solar power sources generated more than 10,570 megawatts of electricity, up from just over 1,000 megawatts in 2010.
France is also the lowest emitter of carbon dioxide in the G7.
Media
The best-selling national newspapers in France are Le Parisien Aujourd'hui en France (with 460,000 copies sold daily), Le Monde and Le Figaro, with some 300,000 copies sold daily, but also L'Équipe, dedicated to sports coverage. In recent years, free newspapers have taken off with a bang, with Metro, 20 Minutos and Direct Plus, with more than 650,000 copies respectively. However, the largest circulation is achieved by the regional daily Ouest-France , with more than 750,000 copies sold, and the other 50 regional newspapers also have high sales. The weekly magazine sector it is stronger and more diversified, with more than 400 specialized weekly magazines published in the country.
The most influential weeklies are the left-wing Le Nouvel Observateur, the centrist L'Express and the right-wing Le Point (more than 400,000 copies), but the greatest circulation of weeklies is reached by television magazines and women's magazines, including Marie Claire and ELLE, which have foreign versions. Among the most influential weeklies are also the investigative and satirical newspapers Le Canard Enchaîné and Charlie Hebdo, as well as Paris Match. As in most industrialized countries, the written press has been affected by a serious crisis in the last decade. In 2008, the government launched a major initiative to help the sector to reform itself and become financially independent, but in 2009 it had to give €600 million to help print media cope with the economic crisis, in addition to the existing grants.
In 1974, after years of centralized monopoly of radio and television, the government agency ORTF was divided into several national institutions, but the three existing television channels and four national radio stations remained under state control. Until 1981 the government did not allow free broadcasting in the territory, ending the state monopoly on radio. French television was partially liberalized in the following two decades with the creation of various commercial channels, mainly thanks to cable television and by satellite. In 2005, the national service Télévision Numérique Terrestre introduced digital television throughout the territory, allowing the creation of other channels.
The four existing national channels are owned by the state consortium France Télévisions and are financed by advertising revenue and television canon. The public broadcasting group Radio France manages five national stations. These public media include Radio France Internationale, which broadcasts programs in French around the world, as well as the French-German channel TV5 Monde. In 2006, the government created the global news channel France 24. The oldest television channels, TF1 (privatized in 1987), France 2 and France 3, have the largest audience shares.
France currently has 4 mobile phone networks: Orange, SFR, Bouygues Telecom and Free Mobile, all licensed for UMTS. All, except Free, are also licensed for GSM. In the third quarter of 2016, Orange had 28,966 million mobile phone customers, SFR with 14,577 million, Bouygues with 12,660 million, Free Mobile with 12,385 million and MVNOs with 7,281 million.
Before the launch of Free Mobile in January 2012, the number of physical mobile phone operators was very limited. For example, Sweden currently has 4 licensed operators and their own networks, despite having a smaller and sparser population than France, making upgrading coverage less cost-effective. However, France has several MVNOs, which increases competition.
The telephone system employs a comprehensive system of modern network elements, such as digital telephone exchanges, mobile switching centers, media gateways, and signaling gateways at the core, interconnected by a variety of transmission systems using fiber optical or microwave radio link networks. The access network, which connects the subscriber to the core, is highly diversified with different copper pair, fiber optic and wireless technologies.
The internet in France has been available to the general public since 1994, but its widespread use did not take off until the mid-2000s. In 2019, 83.34% of French people were internet users. In addition, the speed Average download speed is 56.24 Mbps on mobile networks and 94.24 Mbps on fixed broadband.
Demographics
With an estimated population of 67.413 million people in May 2021, France is the 20th most populous country in the world, the third in Europe (after Russia and Germany) and the second in the European Union (after Germany).).
Despite its diverse population, the government does not collect official statistical data on ethnicity or religion, since French law has prohibited its census since 1978.
Demographic evolution
France is an atypical country among developed countries, especially in Europe, because of its relatively high natural population growth rate: By birth rates alone, it was responsible for almost all of the natural population growth in the European Union in 2006. Between 2006 and 2016, France experienced the second largest overall population increase in the EU and was one of four EU countries where natural births accounted for the majority of population growth. This is the highest rate since the end of the baby boom in 1973 and coincides with the increase in the total fertility rate, which went from a low of 1.7 in 1994 to 2.0 in 2010.
In January 2021, the fertility rate decreased slightly to 1.84 children per woman, below the replacement rate of 2.1, and considerably below the peak of 4.41 in 1800. No However, France's fertility rate and crude birth rate remain among the highest in the EU. However, like many developed nations, the French population is aging; the average age is 41.7 years, while about a fifth of French people are 65 or older. The average life expectancy at birth is 82.7 years, the 12th highest in the world.
From 2006 to 2011, population growth averaged 0.6% per year; since 2011, annual growth has been between 0.4% and 0.5% per year. Immigrants contribute greatly to this trend; in 2010, 27% of newborns in metropolitan France had at least one parent born abroad and another 24% had at least one parent born outside Europe (excluding French overseas territories).
Language
According to Article 2 of the Constitution, the official language of France is French, a Romance language derived from Latin. Since 1635, the French Academy has been France's official authority on the French language, although its recommendations carry no legal weight. Regional languages are also spoken in France, such as Occitan, Breton, Catalan, Flemish (Dutch dialect), Alsatian (German dialect), Basque and Corsican (Italian dialect). Italian was the official language of Corsica until May 9, 1859.
The French government does not regulate the choice of language in private publications, but the use of French is required by law in business and employment communications. In addition to imposing the use of French in the territory of the Republic, the French government tries to promote French in the European Union and in the world through institutions such as the International Organization of la Francophonie. The perception of the threat of Anglicisms has prompted efforts to safeguard the position of the French language in France. In addition to French, there are 77 vernacular minority languages of France, eight spoken in the French metropolitan territory and 69 in the French overseas territories.
From the 17th century to the middle of the XX, French was the quintessential international language of diplomacy and international affairs, as well as a lingua franca among the educated classes of Europe. The dominant position of French in international affairs was surpassed by English, since the appearance of the United States as a great power.
For most of the time that French served as the international lingua franca, it was not the mother tongue of most French people: a 1794 report by Henri Grégoire revealed that of the country's 25 million people, only three million spoke French natively; the rest spoke one of the many regional languages of the country, such as Alsatian, Breton or Occitan. Thanks to the expansion of public education, in which French was the only language of instruction, and other factors such as the increase Due to urbanization and the rise of mass communication, French was being adopted by almost the entire population, a process that was not completed until the XX.
As a result of France's sweeping colonial ambitions between the 17th century and xx, French was introduced to the Americas, Africa, Polynesia, Southeast Asia, and the Caribbean. French is the second most studied foreign language in the world after English, and is a lingua franca in some regions, notably Africa. The legacy of French as a living language outside Europe is mixed: it is almost extinct in some former French colonies (Levant, South and Southeast Asia), while in the French departments of the Antilles and the South Pacific (French Polynesia) it has emerged. Creoles and pidgins based on French. On the other hand, many former French colonies have adopted French as their official language, and the total number of Francophones is increasing, especially in Africa.
It is estimated that between 300 and 500 million people worldwide can speak French, either as their mother tongue or as a second language.
According to the 2007 adult education survey, which is part of a European Union project and conducted in France by INSEE and based on a sample of 15,350 people, French was the mother tongue of 87.2% of the total population, that is, about 55.81 million people, followed by Arabic (3.6%, 2.3 million), Portuguese (1.5%, 960,000), Spanish (1.2%, 770,000) and Italian (1.0%, 640,000). Native speakers of other languages make up the remaining 5.2% of the population.
Immigration
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It is currently estimated that 40% of the French population descends, at least partially, from the different waves of immigration since the beginning of the century XX; between 1921 and 1935 alone, some 1.1 million net immigrants arrived in France. The next largest wave occurred in the 1960s, when some 1.6 million pieds-noirs returned to France. France after the independence of its northwest African possessions, Algeria and Morocco.
France remains a major destination for immigrants, accepting some 200,000 legal immigrants a year. In 2005, it was Western Europe's top recipient of asylum seekers, with some 50,000 applications (although 15% fewer than in 2004). In 2010, France received some 48,100 asylum applications, placing it among the top five asylum recipients in the world, and in subsequent years saw the number of applications increase, eventually doubling to reach 100,412 in 2017.
According to the INED (National Institute for Demographic Studies), in 2018, there were 6.5 million immigrants living in France, 9.7% of the total population (out of 67 million). 4.1 million were foreigners and 2.4 million, being the eighth largest destination for immigration. The composition of the immigrant population in France is changing. The proportion of immigrants born in Spain or Italy who arrived in France a long time ago and are now of advanced age is steadily declining, while immigrants born in North Africa, who are younger and arrived more recently, now make up a larger share. sizeable population. In 2018, 13% of immigrants to France were born in Algeria; 11.9% in Morocco; 9.2% in Portugal; 4.4% in Tunisia; 4.3% in Italy; 3.8% in Turkey; and 3.7% in Spain. Half of the immigrants to France (50.3%) come from these seven countries. In 2018, 52% of immigrants in France were women (provisional figures from advanced population estimates).
Religion
| Religion in France (2016) |
|---|
| Christianity 64.1 % Irreligion 26.6 % Islam 5.6 % 2.5 % Judaism 0.8 % Decision 0.4 % |
The French Republic officially declares itself to be a secular, secular state with religious freedom as a constitutional right. Some organizations such as Scientology, the Unification Church or the International Family or Family (former Children of God) have the status of non-profit associations since they are not recognized as religions, and are considered "sects" in numerous parliamentary studies The central office of worship, under the Ministry of the Interior, ensures relations between the State and established religious associations.
The majority religion is Catholic. There are more than 45,000 Catholic churches in France. The French Law on the separation of Church and State of 1905 is exempted on some points due to the resumption of the concordat relationship with the Catholic Church in 2008 with the signing of the Agreement on the recognition of degrees and higher education diplomas of 18 December 2008, with entry into force on January 1, 2009, and which has led to the official recognition of religious education. It must be taken into account that these agreements, with the value of an international treaty, displace the incompatible internal legislation, by virtue of the primacy of international law. It does not mean, therefore, a repeal of the law, but it does not apply to the Catholic Church with respect to aspects of the agreement.
According to a January 2007 survey by Catholic World News, all major religious denominations are represented in its population, but Catholicism is in recess: Catholics 52% (versus 80% 15 years earlier), atheist 30% (vs. 23% in the same poll 15 years earlier), Muslim 6%, Protestant 6%, Jewish 1.5%, Buddhist 1%, Orthodox 2%, other 1%. In another survey conducted by IFOP and published in the Catholic magazine La Vie, Catholics represent 64%, the proportion of atheists equals 27%, 3% identify as Muslim, 2.1% identify as Protestant and 0.6% identify as Jewish.
According to the most recent Eurobarometer of 2005, 43% of French citizens answered that they "believe there is a god", while 27% answered that "they believe there is some kind of spirit or force" and 30% who "do not believe there is any kind of spirit, god, or force." Another study gives 32% of people who declare themselves atheists, and another 32% who declare themselves "skeptical about the existence of God, but not atheist".
The Jewish population was estimated to be between 530,000 to 550,000 people according to the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France, and is the largest Jewish group in Europe. Estimates of the number of Muslims vary widely. According to the 1999 census there were only 3.7 million people (6.3% of the total population). In 2003, the Ministry of Internal Affairs estimated the total number between 5 and 6 million (8 million according to the National Front).
Education
In 1802, Napoleon created the lycée, the second and last stage of secondary education that prepares students for higher studies or a profession. However, Jules Ferry is considered the father of the modern French school, by leading the reforms at the end of the XIX century that established free, secular and compulsory education (currently compulsory until the age of 16 years).
French education is centralized and divided into three stages: primary, secondary and higher. The Program for International Student Assessment, coordinated by the OECD, ranked France's education as close to the OECD average in 2018. France was one of the PISA participating countries where schoolchildren perceived some of the highest levels low levels of support and feedback from their teachers. Schoolchildren in France reported higher concerns about disciplinary climate and behavior in classrooms compared to other OECD countries.
Primary and secondary education are predominantly public, managed by the Ministry of National Education. While the training and remuneration of teachers and the curriculum are the responsibility of the State at the central level, the management of primary and secondary schools is supervised by local authorities. Primary education comprises two phases, nursery school (école maternelle) and elementary school (école élémentaire). The objective of the infant school is to stimulate the mind of the youngest children and promote their socialization and the development of a basic knowledge of language and numbers. Around the age of six, children go to elementary school, whose main objectives are learning to write, arithmetic and citizenship. Secondary education also consists of two phases. The first is taught in colleges (collège) and leads to the national certificate (Diplôme national du brevet). The second is given in institutes (lycée) and ends with the national exams leading to the baccalauréat (baccalauréat, available in professional, technical or general modalities) or to the certificate of professional aptitude (certificat d'aptitude professionelle).
Higher education is divided between public universities and the prestigious and selective Grandes Écoles. Among the latter, examples should be highlighted such as: Sciences Po Paris for political studies, HEC Paris for economics, the École des hautes études en sciences sociales for social studies, the École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris and the École polytechnique for high-level engineering, the École nationale d'administration for careers in the Great Bodies of the State and ESCP Business School being the oldest business school in the world. The Grandes Écoles have been criticized for their supposed elitism, as many, if not most, of France's top civil servants, CEOs, and politicians are drawn from them.
Health
The French healthcare system is a universal healthcare system financed largely by the government's national health insurance. In its 2000 assessment of global healthcare systems, the World Health Organization considered France to provide the world's "almost the best global healthcare". In 2011, France spent 11.6% of GDP on healthcare, that is, 4,086 dollars per capita, a figure much higher than the average spent by European countries, but lower than that of the United States. Approximately 77% of healthcare spending is covered by government-funded agencies.
Care is generally free for people affected by chronic diseases (affections de longues durées) such as cancer, AIDS or cystic fibrosis. The average life expectancy at birth is 78 years for men and 85 years for women, one of the highest in the European Union and the world. In France there are 3.22 doctors for every 1,000 inhabitants, and the average health expenditure per capita was $4,719 in 2008.
Although the French are reputed to be some of the thinnest people in developed countries, France - like other wealthy countries - is facing a growing and recent epidemic of obesity, due mainly to substitution in French eating habits healthy traditional French cuisine for junk food. The French obesity rate remains well below that of the United States (47% in adults) and remains the lowest in Europe. Childhood obesity rates are shrinking in France, while they continue to grow in other countries.
Urban centers
France is a highly urbanized country, with its largest cities (in terms of metropolitan area population in 2016): Paris (12,568,755 inhabitants), Lyon (2,310,850), Marseille (1,756,296), Toulouse (1,345,343), Bordeaux (1,232,550), Lille (1,187,824), Nice (1,006,402), Nantes (961,521), Strasbourg (785,839) and Rennes (727,357). (Note: there are significant differences between the metropolitan population figures that we have just cited and those in the following table, which indicates the population of the municipalities). Fleeing the countryside was an ongoing political issue for most of the 20th century.
Culture
Literature
The first French literature dates back to the Middle Ages, when what is now modern France did not have a single, uniform language. There were various languages and dialects, and writers used their own spelling and grammar. Some authors of medieval French texts are unknown, such as Tristan and Iseult and Lancelot-Grail. Other authors are known, for example Chrétien de Troyes and Duke William IX of Aquitaine, who wrote in Occitan.
Much of medieval French poetry and literature was inspired by the legends of the subject of France, such as the Song of Roland and the various chansons de geste. The Roman de Renart, written in 1175 by Perrout de Saint Cloude, tells the story of the medieval character Reynard ("the Fox") and is another example of early French writing. An important writer of the 16th century was François Rabelais, whose novel Gargantua and Pantagruel has remained famous and appreciated to this day. Michel de Montaigne was another important figure in French literature of that century. His most famous work, Essais, created the literary genre of the essay.French poetry of that century was embodied by Pierre de Ronsard and Joachim du Bellay. Both writers founded the Pleiad literary movement.
Among the great French writers of the Modern and Contemporary Ages we can mention the playwright Molière, the philosophers Descartes, Montesquieu, Rousseau and Voltaire, the fabulist La Fontaine, the short story writer Charles Perrault, the romantic Victor Hugo, the novelists Gustave Flaubert, Alexandre Dumas and Guy de Maupassant, and Nobel Prize winners Sully Prudhomme, Jean-Paul Sartre, Patrick Modiano and Maurice Druon, author of the series The Damned Kings. Other important authors are Alexandre Dumas (The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo), Jules Verne (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea), Émile Zola (Les Rougon-Macquart), Honoré de Balzac (The Human Comedy), Théophile Gautier and Stendhal. (The red and the black, The Charterhouse of Parma), whose works are among the best known in France and in the world. Both French citizens and Francographers from other countries (such as the Belgian Maurice Maeterlinck or the Senegalese Léopold Sédar Senghor) make up what is known as Francophone literature, which has influenced the work of important foreign authors, and the literature of many countries. Such is the case of the Cuban Alejo Carpentier or the so-called Latin American boom.
French authors have received the most Nobel Prizes for Literature. The first Nobel Prize for Literature was a French author (Sully Prudhomme), while the last Nobel Prize for Literature from France is Patrick Modiano, who received it in 2014. Jean-Paul Sartre was also the first candidate in the committee's history to decline the award in 1964.
Art
The origins of French art were heavily influenced by Flemish art and Italian art of the Renaissance period. Jean Fouquet, the most famous French painter of the Middle Ages, is said to have been the first to travel to Italy and experience the early Renaissance firsthand. The Fontainebleau school of Renaissance painting drew direct inspiration from Italian painters such as Primaticcio and Rosso Fiorentino, who worked in France. Two of the most famous French artists of the Baroque era, Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain, lived in Italy. The 17th century was the period in which French painting gained prominence and became individualized through classicism. Prime Minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert founded the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in 1648 under Louis XIV to protect these artists; in 1666 he also created the still active French Academy in Rome in order to have direct relations with Italian artists.
French artists developed the Rococo style in the 18th century, as a closer imitation of the older Baroque style, being the works of the artists endorsed by the court Antoine Watteau, François Boucher and Jean-Honoré Fragonard the most representative of the country. The French Revolution brought great changes, as Napoleon favored neoclassical artists like Jacques-Louis David and the highly influential Académie des Beaux-Arts defined the style known as Academicism. At this time, France had become a center of artistic creation. The first half of the 19th century was dominated by two successive movements, first Romanticism with Théodore Géricault and Eugène Delacroix, and then the Realism with Camille Corot, Gustave Courbet and Jean-François Millet, a style that ended up evolving towards Naturalism.
In the second part of the 19th century, the influence of France on painting became even more important, with the development of new pictorial styles such as Impressionism and Symbolism. The most famous impressionist painters of the time were Camille Pissarro, Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, and Auguste Renoir. The second generation of Impressionist-style painters, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Georges Seurat, were also at the forefront of artistic developments, as were the Fauvist artists Henri Matisse, André Derain, and Maurice de Vlaminck.
At the beginning of the xx century, Cubism was developed by Georges Braque and the Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, living in Paris. Other foreign artists also settled and worked in or around Paris, such as Vincent van Gogh, Marc Chagall, Amedeo Modigliani, and Wassily Kandinsky. Many museums in France are devoted wholly or partly to works of sculpture and painting. The state-owned Louvre Museum displays a huge collection of ancient masterpieces created before or during the 17th century, such as the Mona Lisa, also known as "La Joconde" or Liberty Leading the People. While the Louvre Palace has long been a museum, the Musée d'Orsay opened in 1986 in the former Gare d'Orsay railway station, in a major reorganization of national art collections, to bring together painting French from the second part of the 19th century century (mainly the Impressionism and Fauvism movements). The Louvre Museum was listed by Forbes in 2017 as the most prestigious museum in the world.
Modern works are presented at the National Museum of Modern Art, which moved in 1976 to the Center Georges Pompidou. These three state museums welcome about 17 million people a year. Other national museums that host paintings are the Grand Palais (1.3 million visitors in 2008), but there are also many museums owned by cities, the most visited the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (0.8 million admissions in 2008), which houses contemporary works. Outside Paris, all major cities have a Museum of Fine Arts with a section dedicated to European and French painting. Some of the best collections are in Lyon, Lille, Rouen, Dijon, Rennes and Grenoble.
Architecture
As far as architecture is concerned, the Celts also left their mark in the erection of large monoliths or megaliths, and the Greek presence since the century VI a. C. is remembered today in the classical heritage of Massalia (Marseille). The Roman style is exemplified by the Maison Carrée, a Roman temple built between 138-161 B.C. C., or in the Pont du Gard built between the years 40 and 60 AD. C., in Nimes and declared universal heritage in 1985. In France the Gothic style was invented, embodied in cathedrals such as Reims, Chartres, Amiens, Notre Dame or Strasbourg. The Renaissance that emerged in Italy, has its architectural style masterfully represented in the Chambord Castle, the Montsoreau Castle or the Fontainebleau Palace among others.
Baroque art (also of Italian origin), and Rococo (French invention) have extraordinary works in France. Such is the case of the Louvre Palace and the Pantheon in Paris among many others. Modernism or modern art in architecture spans the entire XIX century and the first half of the XX, and in it Alexandre Gustave Eiffel revolutionized the architectural theory and practice of his time in the construction of gigantic bridges and in the use of materials such as steel. His most famous work is the so-called Eiffel Tower, built for the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1889. Another great of universal architecture is Le Corbusier, an innovator and functionalist celebrated especially for his urban contributions in residential buildings and Housing complexes.
Music
In French music since before the year 1000, the Gregorian chant used in the liturgies stands out. Polyphony was created in France. In the so-called Ars Antiqua, the Scholae Cantorum (783) is attributed to Charlemagne. The Oaths of Strasbourg is the most important French lyrical work of the Middle Ages, a period in which the Cantares de Gesta such as the Cantar de Roldán take place. France was the cradle of the troubadours in the 12th century, as well as Ars Nova for two centuries. later. During Romanticism, Paris became the musical center of the world and today France maintains a privileged place in musical creation thanks to new generations of composers.
French music then followed the rapid emergence of pop and rock music in the mid-20th century. Although Anglophone creations became popular in the country, French pop music, known as chanson française, has also remained very popular. Among the most important French artists of the century are Édith Piaf, Georges Brassens, Léo Ferré, Charles Aznavour and Serge Gainsbourg. Although there are very few rock groups in France compared to English-speaking countries, groups such as Noir Désir, Mano Negra, Niagara, Les Rita Mitsouko and, more recently, Superbus, Phoenix and Gojira, or Shaka Ponk, have achieved worldwide popularity.
Other French artists with international careers have been popular in various countries, notably singers Dalida, Mireille Mathieu, Mylène Farmer, Alizée and Nolwenn Leroy, electronic music pioneers Jean-Michel Jarre, Laurent Garnier and Bob Sinclar, and later Martin Solveig and David Guetta. In the 1990s and 2000s (decade), the electronic duos Daft Punk, Justice and Air also achieved worldwide popularity and contributed to the reputation of modern electronic music in the world.
Among the current musical manifestations and institutions in France, many are dedicated to classical music and opera. The most prestigious institutions are the National Opera of Paris (with its two venues, the Palais Garnier and the Bastille Opera), the Lyon National Opera, the Châtelet Theater in Paris, the Capitole Theater in Toulouse and the Grand Theater from Bordeaux. As for music festivals, various events are organized, the most popular being the Eurockéennes (a play on words that sounds in French as "European"), the Solidays and Rock en Seine. The Fête de la Musique, imitated by many foreign cities, was first launched by the French government in 1982. Among the major music venues in France are the Le Zénith venues present in many cities and other locations in Paris (Paris Olympia, Théâtre Mogador, Élysée Montmartre).
Cinema
France has a strong historical link to cinema, as two Frenchmen, Auguste and Louis Lumière (known as the Lumière brothers) were the creators of cinema in 1895. The world's first female filmmaker, Alice Guy-Blaché, she was also French. Several important film movements, such as the Nouvelle Vague of the late 1950s and 1960s, began in the country. It stands out for having a strong film industry, due in part to the protections granted by the French Government. France continues to be a leading country in film production, having produced more films in 2015 than any other European country. The country also hosts the Cannes Film Festival, one of the most important and famous in the world.
In addition to its strong and innovative film tradition, France has been a meeting point for artists from all over Europe and the world. For this reason, French cinema is sometimes intertwined with the cinema of foreign nations. Directors from countries such as Poland (Roman Polanski, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Andrzej Żuławski), Argentina (Gaspar Noé, Edgardo Cozarinsky), Russia (Alexandre Alexeieff, Anatole Litvak), Austria (Michael Haneke) and Georgia (Géla Babluani, Otar Iosseliani) stand out in the ranks of French cinema. Instead, French directors have had prolific and influential careers in other countries, such as Luc Besson, Jacques Tourneur or Francis Veber in the United States.
Although the French film market is dominated by Hollywood, France is the only country in the world where American films account for the smallest share of total film revenue, at 50%, compared to 77% in Germany and the 69% from Japan. French films account for 35% of France's total film revenue, the highest percentage of domestic film revenue in the developed world outside the United States, compared to 14% in Spain and 8% in the United States. United Kingdom. France was in 2013 the second exporter of films in the world after the United States.
France was historically the cultural center of the world, although its dominant position has been surpassed by the United States. Today, France adopts measures to protect and promote its culture, becoming one of the main defenders of the cultural exception. The nation managed to convince all members of the EU to refuse to include culture and audiovisuals in the list of liberalized sectors of the WTO in 1993. Furthermore, this decision was confirmed in a vote at UNESCO in 2005: the principle of cultural exception won an overwhelming victory with the vote of 198 countries in favor and only 2 countries, States United States and Israel, against.
Society
According to a 2010 BBC poll, based on 29,977 responses across 28 countries, France is globally regarded as a positive influence on world affairs: 49% have a positive view of the country's influence, while 19% have a negative opinion. The 2008 Nation Brand Index suggests that France has the second best international reputation, behind only Germany. A global opinion poll for the BBC ranked France as the fourth most positively view of the world (behind Germany, Canada and the United Kingdom) in 2014.
According to a 2011 survey, the French are the country with the highest level of religious tolerance and the one with the highest proportion of the population that defines their identity primarily in terms of nationality and not religion. In 2011, the 75% of the French had a favorable opinion of the United States, making France one of the most pro-American countries in the world. In 2017, the favorable opinion of the United States had dropped to 46%. As of January 2010, International Living magazine ranked France as the "best country to live" ahead of 193 other countries for the fifth consecutive year.
The OECD Better Life Index states that "France performs well on many measures of well-being relative to most other Better Life Index countries."
The French Revolution continues to permeate the collective memory of the country. The tricolor flag of France, the Marseillaise and the motto Liberté, égalité, fraternité, defined in Title 1 of the Constitution as national symbols, emerged during the cultural effervescence of the first revolution, together with Marianne, a common national personification. In addition, Bastille Day, the national holiday, commemorates the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789.
A common and traditional symbol of the French people is the Gallic rooster. Its origins go back to antiquity, since the Latin word Gallus meant both "rooster" and "inhabitant of Gaul". Afterwards, this figure gradually became the most shared representation of the French, used by the French monarchs, then by the Revolution and under successive republican regimes as a representation of national identity, used for some stamps and coins.
France is one of the world leaders for gender equality at work: as of 2017, it has 36.8% of company board positions held by women, making it the the G20 leader for that metric. The World Bank ranked it in 2019 as one of the only six countries in the world where women have the same labor rights as men.
France is one of the most liberal countries in the world when it comes to LGBT rights: a 2020 Pew Research Center survey found that 86% of French people think same-sex relationships should be accepted by society, one of the highest acceptance rates in the world (comparable to other Western European nations). France legalized same-sex marriage and adoption in 2013. The government has used its diplomatic influence to support rights LGBT around the world, especially at the United Nations.
In 2020, France ranked fifth in the Environmental Performance Index (behind the United Kingdom), out of 180 countries ranked by Yale University in that study. By hosting the Conference on Environmental 2015 Paris Climate Change, the French government was instrumental in achieving the 2015 Paris Agreement, a success that has been attributed to its "openness and experience in diplomacy".
Gastronomy
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French cuisine is reputed to be one of the best in the world. According to the regions, the traditional recipes are different, the north of the country prefers to use butter as the preferred fat for cooking, while olive oil is more used in the South. Furthermore, each region of France has emblematic traditional specialities: Cassoulet in the southwest, Choucroute in Alsace, Quiche in the Lorraine region, Beef bourguignon in Burgundy, Provençal tapenade, etc. The best-known products of France are wines, such as Champagne, Bordeaux, Bourgogne and Beaujolais, as well as a wide variety of more than 400 different cheeses, such as Camembert, Roquefort and Brie.
A meal usually consists of three courses, hors d'oeuvres or starters (introductory course, sometimes soup), main course, fromage (cheese plate), or dessert, sometimes with a salad offered before cheese or dessert. Hors d'oeuvres might be a saumon au basilic terrine, lobster bisque, foie gras, French onion soup, or croque monsieur. The main course could include a pot au feu or a steak frites. Dessert can be a millefeuille, a macaron, an éclair, crème brûlée, mousse au chocolat, crêpes or café liégeois.
French cuisine is also considered a key element of France's quality of life and attractiveness. A French publication, the Michelin Guide, awards Michelin stars for excellence to a select few establishments. The acquisition or loss of one star can have dramatic effects on the success of a restaurant. As of 2006, the Michelin Guide had awarded 620 stars to French restaurants, at the time more than any other country, although the guide also inspects more restaurants in France than any other country (in 2010, Japan received as many Michelin stars as France, compared to France). despite having half the Michelin inspectors working there).
In addition to its winemaking tradition, France is also a major producer of beer and rum. The three main French brewing regions are Alsace (60% of national production), Nord-Pas-de-Calais and Lorraine. France produces rum through distilleries located on islands such as Martinique.
Sports
Olympic Sports
The modern Olympic Games were founded by French historian Pierre de Coubertin as a way to revive the ancient Greek Olympic Games, and France has competed in all editions (both summer and winter), with the possible exception of the 1904 Olympic Games (as sources disagree on whether athlete Albert Corey competed for the United States or France). Additionally, France has hosted the Olympic Games five times and plans to host the sixth: the 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris, the 1924 Winter Olympics in Chamonix, the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris, the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble, the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, and the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.
French athletes have won 749 medals at the Summer Olympic Games in a wide variety of sports, achieving particular success in fencing and cycling. France has won another 138 medals at the Winter Olympics, mostly in alpine skiing.
One of the keys to why France is one of the greatest sports powers in the world is due to INSEP, a state-funded high-performance center located on the outskirts of Paris that is considered a world reference in grassroots sports. An example This is why many of the 330 French athletes who competed in the London Olympics went through this high performance center. In recent years the institute has invested 230 million euros in improving its sports and medical facilities.
Cycling
According to historical records, the origin of cycling has its roots in the gardens of the Palais Royal in Paris. In 1791, the Count of Sivrac was seen riding a rigid two-wheeled contraption called a celeriferous. Although totally dysfunctional and impossible to steer—to change direction, the rider had to physically redirect the front wheel with a drag, lift, or jump—the novelty of this new invention aroused public interest. In 1793, sports clubs throughout Paris began to organize frequent races along the famous Champs-Élysées. In later years the Tour de France was born, held annually in July since 1903, being the most prestigious cycling competition of the Grand Tours and the most famous cycling competition in the world.
Football
Soccer is the most popular sport in the country, and the France national soccer team is one of the leading national teams in the world. He has won the Soccer World Cup in France 1998 and Russia 2018, Euro 2000 and Euro 1984, the 2020-21 UEFA Nations League and the 2001 and 2003 Confederations Cups.
The national league, known as Ligue 1, is one of the main European leagues. Clubs such as Olympique de Marseille, the only French club to win the prestigious UEFA Champions League, and Saint-Étienne, the most successful club in the country, stand out. Likewise, Olympique Lyonnais (club that won seven uninterrupted league titles at the beginning of the XXI century), Paris, stands out. Saint-Germain (currently winner of nine titles, having won the last season completed -2019-20-), AS Monaco (a club that despite being a foreigner -from the state of the same name, where it is the only sports club-, participates in the French league), Lille O.S.C, among others.
Other sports
The French basketball team is one of the best national teams in the world. He obtained fifth place in the 2006 World Basketball Championship, in addition to the silver medal in the men's and the bronze in the women's at Tokyo 2020.
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France is one of the world's motorsport powers, as it hosts the 24 Hours of Le Mans, one of the most important motorsport races in the world. The French Grand Prix was held from 1950 to 2008, and ten years later (2018) this competition was held again at the Paul Ricard Circuit. In addition, there have been prestigious French teams in the premier class, including Equipe Ligier and the Renault F1 team that were champions in 2005 and 2006.
The Roland Garros Tournament in Paris is one of the tournaments that make up the Grand Slam, the most important tennis event in the world.
When it comes to martial arts, France also stands out as one of the best in Europe. Well, the one that dominates the most to this day is karate, judo and savate (French boxing), the latter one of the most widespread in the world, mainly in Knock Out tournaments. In judo, the Frenchman David Douillet stands out as one of the most important in world history, with various participations and awards throughout his career and Clarisse Agbegnenou, Olympic medalist in Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020, in addition to several championships. world.
The French rugby team is one of the best in the world, and rugby is very popular. In addition, the French rugby league is one of the most important in the world.
Handball is one of the most followed sports, having the French handball team as a major international player. His record includes the title in the 2010 European Cup, 6 golds in the World Championship, and the gold medal at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, being the first handball team to win these three titles, the most important. of the world in this sport, consecutively.
Geographic location of metropolitan France
| Northwest: Canal de la Mancha (United Kingdom .svg){kind=small} United Kingdom)
| North: Belgium BelgiumNorth Sea | Northeast: Luxembourg LuxembourgGermany  Germany
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| West: Atlantic Ocean |  | This: GermanyGermany Switzerland  Switzerland
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Southwest: Spain SpainAndorra  Andorra
| South: SpainSpain Mediterranean Sea | Sureste: Italy ItalyMonaco  MonacoMediterranean Sea |