France

France, in long form since 1875 the French Republic, is a transcontinental sovereign state whose metropolitan territory is located in Western Europe, and whose overseas territory is located in the Indian, Atlantic and Pacific Oceans as well as in South America. It is the only country in the world to span thirteen time zones. The country has land borders with Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain and the two principalities of Andorra and Monaco in Europe, to which are added the land borders with Brazil, Suriname and the Netherlands in the Americas. France has important coastlines on the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, the Pacific and the Indian Ocean, allowing it to benefit from the second largest exclusive economic zone in the world.

France is a unitary constitutional republic with a semi-presidential system. The motto of the Republic has been since 1875 “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” and its flag consists of the three national colors: blue, white, red. Its national anthem is La Marseillaise, a patriotic song inherited from the French Revolution. In addition, the constitutive principle is democracy: the “government of the people, by the people and for the people”. Its capital is Paris and its official language is French (language of administration since 1539). Its currencies are the euro since 2002 in most of the country and the Pacific franc in its territories in the Pacific Ocean.

The first foundations of the country were instituted by the Franks (Germanic people) on the basis of Roman Gaul. It is over the centuries, through wars, political marriages and sovereign unions, that this monarchical and Catholic state will gradually constitute around it a real federation of provinces, which will eventually crystallize into a single nation under the effect of a policy of administrative and cultural standardization, brought to its conclusion by the French Revolution and the end of the feudal regime.

From the middle of the sixteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century, it had a vast colonial empire. From the 1950s, it was one of the actors in the construction of the European Union. Second European army behind Russia, the world’s fourth largest nuclear and space power, fifth largest military budget in the world, one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and a member of NATO, France is also a member of the G7, the G20, the Council of Europe, the euro area, the Schengen area, the Indian Ocean Commission, of the Pacific Community, and is home to the headquarters of several international organizations including the Council of Europe, UNESCO, OECD, Interpol, and the International Agency for Research on Cancer.

It thus exerts a significant influence in political, economic, military and cultural matters, in Europe and in the rest of the world, it is ranked in 2019 in the first place in the world of the Soft Power 30 index thanks to its vast diplomatic scope, its cultural richness and the strong international mastery of the President of the Republic.

France is the only country in the world to exercise sovereignty over territories spread over four oceans and two continents. It plays an important geopolitical role at the global level, thanks to an extensive network of embassies and consulates, the third largest in the world behind those of China and the United States, as well as its seat as a permanent member of the UN Security Council. Its military weight is not negligible due to military bases on all continents and its status as a military nuclear power. With its extensive territory spread over the entire planet, France is also one of the leading countries in the world for the variety of its maritime environments and their biodiversity.

France is, with a nominal GDP of US$2,938 billion in 2021 according to the IMF, the third European economy after Germany and The United Kingdom, as well as the seventh largest economy in the world. With an unemployment rate of 7.4% (in the fourth quarter of 2021), it nevertheless has a “very high” standard of living (24th in the HDI ranking in 2018). It is one of the world leaders in the agri-food, aeronautics, automotive, tourism, nuclear and luxury sectors. In the nineteenth century, the population of France is about 67.8 million inhabitants, according to estimates published by INSEE: 65,127,000 in metropolitan areas, 2,180,600 in overseas regions and 631,300 in overseas collectivities and New Caledonia.

One of the most populous countries in Europe (very close to the United Kingdom, it is clearly surpassed only by Russia and Germany), France is also the largest country in the European Union and the third largest country in Europe after Russia and Ukraine. Its culture and civilization are disseminated by French-speaking countries around the world, united in the International Organization of La Francophonie.

Traditionally used as the language of diplomacy, French is the tenth most spoken mother tongue in the world, the fifth most spoken language in total number of speakers and one of the languages with the greatest international circulation. It is one of the six official languages and one of the two working languages (together with English) of the United Nations, one of the two official languages of the International Olympic Committee and the official or working language of several international or regional organizations. French is also one of the three working languages of the European Union, along with German and English.

Toponymy of France

France takes its name from the Franks (Germanic people) who instituted the first foundations on the bases of Roman Gaul.

The first occurrences of the word “France” in the French language are found in the eleventh century, especially in the Chanson de Roland (around 1080), but the Latin term Francia was already used in earlier texts, with varying meanings.

Geography

Location, boundaries and area in France

The European part of France is called metropolitan France. It is located at the western end of Europe, and its delimitation has remained unchanged since the end of World War II and the Treaty of Paris in 1947. France is bordered by the North Sea to the north, the English Channel to the north-northwest, the Celtic Sea to the west-northwest, the Bay of Biscay to the west and the Mediterranean Sea to the southeast. It borders Belgium to the north-northeast, Luxembourg to the northeast, Germany to the east-northeast, Switzerland to the east, Italy to the east-southeast, Monaco to the southeast and Spain and Andorra to the south-southwest.

The borders to the east, south-east and south-west of the metropolitan territory are established on the basis of rivers and mountain ranges, namely the Rhine, Jura, Lake Geneva, the Alps and the Pyrenees, while in the north-east the border is not based on natural elements.

France is also composed of many territories located outside the European continent, commonly called overseas France, which allows it to be present in all the oceans of the world except the Arctic Ocean.

These territories have varied statuses in the territorial administration of France and are located:

• In North America: Saint Pierre and Miquelon;
• In South America: Guyana;
• In the West Indies: Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint-Barthélemy and Saint-Martin;
• In the Pacific Ocean: New Caledonia, French Polynesia and Wallis and Futuna, as well as Clipperton Island;
• In the Indian Ocean: Reunion and Mayotte, as well as the Scattered Islands, the Kerguelen Islands, the Crozet Archipelago and the Islands of Saint-Paul and New Amsterdam which form the French Southern and Antarctic Territories (TAAF);
• In the Atlantic Ocean: The French estates of St. Helena;
• In the Southern Ocean: the Kerguelen Islands;
• In the Middle East: The French national domain in the Holy Land;
• In Antarctica: Adélie Land also included in the TAAF;
• In the Arctic: the Jean Corbel base a French scientific research base located near Ny-Ålesund, on the Svalbard archipelago.

France has territories in Guyana, which have land borders with Brazil and Suriname, as well as with the Netherlands sharing the island of Saint Martin in the West Indies.

The length of the coastline of metropolitan France is 5,853 km and reaches 15,945 km including the overseas territories.

According to INSEE, metropolitan France covers 543,940 km2, while the IGN, which takes into account all areas up to the low-water mark, counts an area of 551,695 km2 which constitutes the official value.

Similar differences appear for the area of metropolitan France and the French overseas departments, which stand at 633,109 km2 for INSEE (cadastral area) and 641,184 km2 for IGN (geodetic area). The area of the entire France, including DROM, COM and TOM, but excluding Land Adélie stands at 672,051 km2.

France is the42nd largest state in the world by land surface. It is also the third largest country in Europe, after Russia and Ukraine, or the second if we include the overseas departments, and the largest in the European Union.

Geology, topography and hydrography

The metropolitan territory of France offers a wide variety of topographical ensembles and natural landscapes. Large parts of the current European territory of France have been raised during several tectonic episodes, including the Hercynian surrection in the Paleozoic era, which is at the origin of the Armorican, Central, Morvandiau, Vosges, Ardennes and Corsican massifs. The Alpine, Pyrenean and Jura massifs are much younger, and have less eroded forms — the Alps culminate at 4,808 meters above sea level at Mont Blanc. Although 60% of municipalities are classified as presenting seismic risks, these remain moderate.

These massifs delimit several sedimentary basins, including the Aquitaine Basin to the southwest and the Paris Basin to the north — the latter includes several regions with particularly fertile soil, including the loamy plateaus of Beauce and Brie. In addition, various natural passageways, such as the Rhone Valley, allow for easy communication. The coastlines offer quite contrasting landscapes; these are sometimes fallout from mountain ranges (the Côte d’Azur for example), plateaus ending on cliffs (the Alabaster Coast) or wide sandy plains (the plain of Languedoc).

The hydrographic network of metropolitan France is mainly organized around four major rivers, the Loire, the Seine, the Garonne and the Rhône, to which we can add the Meuse and the Rhine, less important in France, but major on a European scale. The French watershed of the first four covers more than 62% of the metropolitan territory.

The overseas territories, by their dispersion in different oceans and continents, all have specific topographical characteristics. However, they share commonalities, including constraints, risks or physical potentialities, starting with insularity (with the exception of French Guiana).

Most of these islands are of volcanic origin, in the form of volcanic arcs linked to subduction (Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint-Barthélemy and Saint-Martin in the Lesser Antilles, the Matthew and Hunter islands south of the Vanuatu arc or the Loyalty Islands in New Caledonia), strings of islands initially formed around hot spots on the oceanic lithosphere (the constituent archipelagos of French Polynesia or taAF, Reunion, Mayotte in the Comoros archipelago, Clipperton), volcanic plateaus from mantle plumes (the Kerguelen plateau whose land forms the archipelago of the same name and that of the Crozet archipelago in the TAAF) or partly submerged components of a mountain massif on the continental lithosphere (Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon is thus linked to the orogeny of the Appalachians).

The more or less ancient ages of the volcanic episodes that caused their formation explain varying degrees of erosion of reliefs, subsidences, coral reef formations and limestone deposits. As a result, several of these islands retain a more or less high rock remnant of the ancient volcanoes (the “high islands”, with or without coral border), whether they are inactive (in most of the high islands of French Polynesia such as Tahiti, the Matthew and Hunter islands in New Caledonia, Wallis and Futuna, Mayotte, the Kerguelen islands in TAAF), potentially active (the island of Possession in the Crozet archipelago and the TAAF), or active (La Soufrière on Basse-Terre in Guadeloupe, Montagne Pelée in Martinique, piton de la Fournaise in Reunion, Mehetia in the Society archipelago in French Polynesia, the Islands of Saint-Paul and New Amsterdam in the TAAF).

It is in these high islands that the highest points of the French Overseas Territories are located. The only two overseas territories to have peaks exceeding 2,000 m above sea level are Reunion (culminating at the Piton des Neiges at 3,070.5 m) and Tahiti (Mount Orohena reaches 2,241 m).

The oldest islands or those affected by other geological phenomena have much lower reliefs and more calcareous soils, having become peninsulas (Clipperton, potentially Fatu Huku in the Marquesas in French Polynesia), raised atolls (Grande-Terre, Marie-Galante, La Désirade and the islands of Petite-Terre in Guadeloupe, Saint-Martin and Saint-Barthélemy, the Loyalty Islands but also the Isle of Pines in New Caledonia, Alofi in Wallis and Futuna, Makatea in the Tuamotu or Bora-Bora and Huahine in the Society Archipelago in French Polynesia, Tromelin Island in the Scattered Islands of the Indian Ocean and the TAAF) or atolls (numerous in French Polynesia, also in the reefs of Entrecasteaux in New Caledonia, the Scattered Islands of the Indian Ocean in the TAAF).

In addition, the archipelago of New Caledonia has the particularity among the island groups of the French Overseas Territories of having no link with volcanic activity, having been formed by a series of obduction of the mantle above part of the land surface of the microcontinent Zealandia, which explains its richness in ultramafic rocks (peridotites) and, by the alteration of the latter, nickel. Grande Terre, which is the largest French island, and all the islands that extend it to the northwest (Bélep) and southeast (the Isle of Pines) are surrounded by a 1,600 km long coral reef (the second largest coral complex in the world after the Great Barrier Reef) delimiting one of the largest lagoons in the world (24,000 km2).

The only continental territories in the overseas France, Guyana and Adélie Land are both components of cratons of Precambrian ages where metamorphic rocks predominate (respectively the Guiana Plateau and that of East Antarctica) and, for their coastlines as for submerged soils, continental margins. Both also have the common point of being covered, for a large majority of their territories, by specific natural environments very little affected by human activities: the Amazon rainforest for the first and the Antarctic ice sheet for the second.

France has 11 million square kilometers of marine water under its jurisdiction, in three oceans and 97% overseas. They are the second largest exclusive economic zone in the world.

Climate

The climate of metropolitan France is strongly influenced by the Azores anticyclone, but also by the Gulf Stream like the rest of Western Europe, with quite marked regional or local variants. Metropolitan France is experiencing climatic events with significant consequences: storms (those of December 1999 cut down 7% of the trees in French forests), heat waves (the European heat wave of 2003 caused 15,000 deaths), fires and floods.

We usually distinguish the strict oceanic climate very marked in the west. It extends from Flanders to the Basque Country, on a coastal strip of a few tens of kilometers (the limit is difficult to define), narrower to the north and south, wider in Brittany which is concerned almost entirely by this climate. The Aquitaine oceanic climate of the southwest is warmer, because further south. The climate of the northwest façade is oceanic, but cooler than the Oceanic climate of Aquitaine; the intensity of the westerly winds is much stronger.

The degraded oceanic climate of plain located in the center-north is sometimes called “Parisian” because it corresponds approximately to the Parisian basin, for which the oceanic climate is weakly altered. The semi-continental climate in the north-east and center-east (Alsace, plains of the Saône or the Middle Rhône, plains of Dauphinoise, Auvergne or Savoyard) is itself subdivided and has characteristics even more modified by the vicinity of the mountain ranges.

A southern semi-continental climate characterized by a warm climate exists in the plains of the Rhone Valley around Lyon as well as those of Forez. Limagne and the region around Clermont-Ferrand experience the same climate through the foehn effect and a geographical position in the southern half of France. The eastern semi-continental climate is present from Burgundy to the Ardennes. Finally, the mountain climate is present, mainly at altitude in the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Massif Central, the Vosges, the Jura and the Corsican mountains.

Much of the overseas France is also subject to tropical climates (with strong disparities), to which must be added the equatorial climate of Guyana, the subarctic climate of Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon and the oceanic and polar climates of the French Southern and Antarctic Territories.

The average temperature in France has risen by an average of 0.1 °C per decade during the twentieth century. On June 28, 2019, in Vérargues, the thermometer reached 46 ° C, setting a new absolute temperature record in metropolitan France since the readings exist.

Landscapes and environment in France

Metropolitan France has a wide variety of landscapes, with agricultural or wooded plains, more or less eroded mountain ranges, diverse coastlines and valleys mixing city and nature. The overseas France has an important biodiversity, for example in the Guyanese equatorial forest or in the lagoons of New Caledonia. France is one of the most forested countries in Western Europe, with forests occupying 31% of the metropolitan territory. The forest area in metropolitan France consists of 67% deciduous, 21% coniferous and 12% mixed stand. Wetlands, which potentially cover about a quarter of France’s surface, have declined sharply since the nineteenth century.

• The Loire at Montsoreau, Loire Valley.
• Cliffs of Étretat, Normandy.
• Lac des Perches, Vosges massif, Alsace.
• Châtenois, Alsace.
• Aiguille du Dru, Haute-Savoie.
• The village of Usson, Massif Central.
• High mountain torrent, Haute-Maurienne.
• Lavender field in Provence.
• Wetland of the Marais Poitevin.
• Calanques de Piana, Corsica.
• The beach of Sainte-Anne, Guadeloupe.
• Amazon rainforest, French Guiana.
• Cook Glacier, Kerguelen Islands.
• Dune du Pilat in Nouvelle-Aquitaine.
• The tip of the Van, at the western end of Brittany.
• Calanque des Pierres-Tombées Cassis.

This diversity of landscapes and ecosystems is threatened by the ecological fragmentation of environments due to a dense road network, by the horizontal development of urbanization that it promotes, by the artificialization of coasts and by the pollution of its water and soils. A third of surface water is of poor or very poor quality, mainly due to industrial pollution; agricultural pollution linked to the use of fertilizers and pesticides has greatly deteriorated the quality of groundwater in several regions, particularly in Brittany.

The coastalization of the population and activities leads to an extension and densification of buildings on the coasts, despite the coastal law of 1986 and the intervention of the Conservatoire du littoral as well as the floodability of certain sectors. As for transport infrastructure, particularly road infrastructure, it exposes its residents to significant air, noise and visual pollution.

Thanks to a policy of limiting the use of petroleum products and the importance of nuclear energy, French carbon dioxide emissions per capita are lower than those of most of its European neighbors, and a fortiori those of the United States.

However, according to a study by the Ministry of Ecology, Energy, Sustainable Development and the Sea published in 2010, “on several points, the environmental balance remains worrying, even deteriorating”. Greenhouse gas emissions on French territory represented in 2017 about 1% of global emissions. The profile of the French would be that of an “average polluter” given that they form about 1% of the world’s population. This figure of 1% does not take into account all the pressure exerted by the country on the climate. Indeed, the carbon footprint of France is about 1.8 times larger than its territorial emissions.

With a per capita ecological footprint of 4.9 global hectares (Hag) and a per capita biocapacity of 3 Hag in 2011, France is in ecological deficit.

Plastic production in France increased by 7.8% between 2016 and 2017. Every year, 11,200 tons of French plastic waste are dumped in the Mediterranean. Rivers are also affected by microplastic pollution.

In 2015, a parliamentary committee of inquiry reported that air pollution represented an annual cost of €101.3 billion for France.

Preservation of the environment in France

Public authorities have been trying for several decades to respond to these environmental challenges. Since 1967, regional nature parks have been added to nature reserves and national parks, which combine conservation and enhancement of natural and cultural heritage and cover, in 2018, 15% of the French territory. Six water agencies have been set up to manage and protect the country’s water resources.

The Natura 2000 network brings together natural or semi-natural sites in the European Union with a high heritage value, due to the exceptional fauna and flora they contain. As of December 2018, the Natura 2000 network has France 1,779 sites, including 212 marine sites, including:

• 402 Special Protection Areas (SPAs) for birds;
• 1,377 Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) for habitats and species.

The total area is 200,364 km2, which represents 12.9% of the metropolitan land area (7 million hectares) and 33% of the marine area of the exclusive economic zone (12.3 million hectares).

The Gironde estuary is classified as a marine natural park and belongs to the Natura 2000 network. The left bank is part of the Médoc Regional Natural Park. Covering an area of 635 km2, it is the largest estuary in Europe.

Spatial distribution of people and activities

Metropolitan France is marked by multiple spatial imbalances. On the one hand, it has the originality of having a capital six times more populated than the second attraction of the country, bringing together a quarter of the students and almost all the headquarters of large companies in the country.

On the other hand, the Le Havre–Marseille line is often seen as the boundary between a west that has long remained agricultural and currently enjoys significant demographic and economic growth, and the east with ancient industry and urbanization, now in decline. Finally, from the Ardennes in the northeast to the Landes in the southwest, a “diagonal of low densities” is emerging, characterized by a low population compared to the rest of the country and an economy often in difficulty.

After a long rural exodus in the nineteenth century and until the second half of the twentieth century, net migration from the French countryside became positive again in the 1990s. Most of the urban growth is in peri-urban areas, which are increasingly far from the agglomeration center. The table below lists the main cities of the country in 2017, ranked by default according to the population of their urban area (more than 500,000 inhabitants).

Town	Metropolitan area	Urban pole	Commune
Paris	12628266	10784830	2187526
Lyon	2323221	1659001	516092
Marseille and Aix-en-Provence	1760653	1590867	863310142482
Toulouse	1360829	968638	479553
Bordeaux	1247977	927445	254436
Lille	1191117	1043621	232787
Nice	1006201	942886	340017
Nantes	972828	650081	309346
Strasbourg	790087	467438	280966
Rennes	733320	335092	216815
Grenoble	689840	510858	158454
Rouen	666035	467575	110145
Toulon	629334	575347	171953
Montpellier	616296	440997	285121
Douai and Lens	539666	503966	3970031415
Avignon	530267	457684	91921
Saint-Étienne	520640	374243	172565

Lines of communication and transport in France

Due to its geographical location, which forms a European crossroads, France is a country of passage. It is, in fact, the obligatory passage for people and goods traveling by land between the Iberian Peninsula and the rest of Europe and, since the opening in 1994 of the Channel Tunnel, between the United Kingdom and the continent. Legacies of history, French transport networks are highly centralized around Paris; this centralization is particularly strong in rail and air transport, although it is beginning to decrease.

Road transport is the main mode of transport used in France, in 2014 it accounted for 83% of passenger traffic and 85% of freight traffic. France has nearly 1.1 million kilometers of roads in 2014, almost all of which are paved. Since the Liberation, France has acquired an extensive motorway network, which totaled 11,560 km in 2014. In recent decades, public policies have focused on reducing fatal accidents on the road, the main causes of which are speed and alcohol, and have sought to promote other means of transport that are less polluting than the private car.

The national rail network, meanwhile, dates mainly from the mid to late nineteenth century; in 2018, it has about 28,000 km of lines, more than half of which are electrified and 2,800 km of high-speed lines. Most of the traffic is managed by the public limited company SNCF on lines owned by the State and allocated to the SNCF network, a subsidiary of the company.

Since the 1980s, passenger traffic has been increasing in France thanks to the regions taking over regional and local traffic and, above all, thanks to the birth and continuous extension of the network of high-speed lines traveled by the TGV. On the other hand, freight traffic is constantly decreasing. In addition, the main cities of the country have an urban rail network, such as the metro (Paris, Lyon, Lille, Marseille, Toulouse and Rennes), tramway (Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Nantes, Strasbourg, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Grenoble, Montpellier and Nice in particular) or RER (Paris); The Paris Metro, born in 1900, forms one of the oldest and densest networks in the world.

As for air transport, it is particularly centralized: the two Parisian airports – Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle and Orly – welcomed 101.5 million passengers in 2017, when the first regional airport, Nice-Côte d’Azur, welcomed 13.3 million. Regional airports are, in fact, competing with the TGV for national traffic, while Paris airports handle almost all long-haul traffic. France is also the headquarters of one of the world’s leading airlines in terms of the number of passengers carried (Air France-KLM) and Europe’s leading civil aircraft manufacturer (Airbus), the second largest in the world.

Other modes of transport are used in France, but they are more marginal. Inland waterway traffic provides a negligible share of passenger traffic and very secondary freight traffic, mainly due to the unsuitability of a large part of the network for modern traffic. Maritime traffic is important: Calais is the second largest port in the world for passenger traffic. As far as sea freight is concerned, the ports of Dunkirk, Le Havre, Nantes–Saint-Nazaire and Bordeaux are less important than their North Sea rivals such as Rotterdam, Antwerp and Hamburg and are now well ahead of those of Amsterdam and Bremen-Bremerhaven; the port of Marseille, in first place in France by its traffic, and one of the first terminals in Europe for cruises, is the second port of the Mediterranean, behind Algeciras (Spain).

The mode of transport by bicycle is now experiencing a resurgence of interest, especially in response to the environmental concern of the French, thanks to the development of urban networks of bike paths and the implementation of self-service bicycles in several cities of the country. Nevertheless, the quality of these developments is very uneven according to the territories.

History of France

The current metropolitan France occupies most of ancient Celtic Gaul, conquered by Julius Caesar in the first century BC, but it takes its name from the Franks, a Germanic people who settled there from the fifth century. France is a state whose unification is ancient and was one of the first countries in the modern era to attempt a democratic experiment.

Prehistory, Protohistory and Antiquity

The human presence on the territory of the current France dates back to the Lower Paleolithic; the oldest traces of human life date from about 1,800,000 years ago. Man is then confronted with a harsh and variable climate, marked by several ice ages that modify his living environment. France has a significant number of decorated caves from the Upper Paleolithic, two of the most famous of which are the Lascaux cave (Dordogne, -18000 approximately) and the Chauvet cave (Pont d’Arc, -36000 approximately).

Around -10000, at the end of the last ice age, the climate softened. From about 7000 BC, Western Europe entered the Neolithic and its inhabitants settled, even if the evolution is different according to the regions. After a strong demographic and agricultural development in the fourth and third millennia, metallurgy appeared at the end of the third millennium, first with the work of gold, copper and bronze, then with that of iron in the eighth century.

In 600 BC, Greeks from the city of Phocaea founded the city of Marseille, on the shores of the Mediterranean; at the same time, some Celtic peoples entered the territory of present-day France, but this occupation did not generalize to the entire territory until the fifth and third centuries BC. The notion of Gaul, Γαλατία in Greek, then appears; it corresponds to the Celtic settlement territories between the Rhine, the Pyrenees, the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.

Contrary to the reductive vision given by Caesar in his Gallic War, this vast geographical space is occupied by a mosaic of more than a hundred peoples whose organization is very diverse, but who all have one thing in common: “whether it is agriculture, urban planning, commerce or art, they share an advanced know-how”.

From 125 BC, the south of Gaul (57 Gallic peoples) was gradually conquered by the Roman Republic following the victory of Rome over the Allobroges and the Arvernes. Rome founded the cities of Aix-en-Provence, Toulouse and Narbonne. In 58 BC, Julius Caesar took the pretext of a request for help from the Aedui to set out to conquer the rest of Gaul. First defeated at Gergovia, he was defeated at Alesia.

The rich newly conquered fiscal territories were divided by the Emperor of Rome Augustus into nine provinces, four of which correspond approximately to the current French metropolitan territory: Narbonnaise to the south, Aquitaine to the southwest, Lyonnaise to the center and west and Belgium to the north. Many cities were founded during the Gallo-Roman period, including Lyon (Lugdunum) in 43 BC, which was called to be the capital of Roman Gaul, which then enjoyed peace for about two centuries.

In the third century, Roman Gaul experienced a serious crisis, the limes, a fortified border protecting the Empire from Germanic incursions, being crossed several times by the Barbarians. The Roman power tottering an Empire of Gauls is proclaimed in 260 which escapes the Roman tutelage until 274.

During the first half of the fourth century, Roman Gaul experienced a period of renewal and prosperity. However, the barbarian invasions resumed from the second half of the fourth century and on December 31, 406, the Vandals, Suevi and Alans crossed the Rhine and crossed Gaul to Spain. In the middle of the fifth century, the Alamanni and franks settled in the north-east of present-day France and exerted strong pressure on the remaining Roman generals in northeastern Gaul.

As for the overseas France during this time: Guyana is occupied by peoples living by hunting and gathering; Saint Pierre and Miquelon received paleo Eskimo visits; the French West Indies were animated by a pre-Columbian period; Guadeloupe by pre-ceramic Amerindian groups; New Caledonia, Wallis and Futuna received their first inhabitants around 3000 BC, and their first civilization, the Lapita, developed in the first millennium BC; the other overseas territories seemed unoccupied during this period.

Birth, crises and transformations of the kingdom of France in the Middle Ages

The conversion to Christianity of the Frankish leader Clovis, baptized in Reims on December 24, 496 by the bishop Saint Rémi, made him the ally of the Church and allowed him to conquer most of Gaul at the turn of the fifth and sixth centuries. The fusion of Gallo-Roman heritages, Germanic contributions and Christianity was long and difficult, the Franks originally constituting a warrior society with laws far removed from Roman law and Christian principles.

While the demographic weakness experienced by the Frankish kingdom led to a decline in the cities, Christianity was established through the foundation of rural churches and especially many monasteries. If the power of Clovis originally seemed solid, the Merovingian dynasty soon had to face serious difficulties; it disappeared in 751 when Pepin the Short was crowned king of the Franks, thus founding the Carolingian dynasty.

Pepin the Short and his son Charlemagne considerably enlarged the kingdom of the Franks, which extended at the end of the eighth century over more than a million square kilometers. The immense Carolingian Empire was controlled by a centralized administration based in Aachen, counts representing Charlemagne throughout the empire and overseen by the missi dominici. Charlemagne, crowned emperor of the West in 800, revived the liberal arts in education and the palace of Aachen hosted a high-level intellectual and artistic activity.

Nevertheless, after the death of the emperor, the counts and vassals of the latter gradually managed to make their function hereditary, and the grandsons of Charlemagne divided the Empire at the Treaty of Verdun (843); Charles obtained West Francia, which corresponded to approximately two-thirds of the western France and whose borders varied little until the end of the Middle Ages. The new kingdom, however, had to face three different waves of invasions in the ninth and tenth centuries, led by Muslims, Vikings and Hungarians. At the same time, the powers of the former counts continued to increase while royal power declined; a feudal society was set up, characterized by its division into three orders: the clergy, the nobility and the Third Estate.

In 987, Hugh Capet was elected king by his peers, that is to say the nobles of the kingdom; the monarchy became hereditary again and the Capetians ruled France for more than eight centuries. Nevertheless, the early Capetian kings directly controlled only a very small portion of French territory, called the royal domain, and some of their vassals were much more powerful than them. In the twelfth century, the royal power began to assert itself against the princes of the kingdom, but had to face from the 1150s the birth of a “Plantagenet empire” bringing together England and the western third of France.

The Capetian kingdom reached its first peak in the thirteenth century, the monarchy regaining the power it had lost while French art and culture asserted themselves in Europe. Philip Augustus (1180-1223) managed to conquer most of the Plantagenets’ French possessions, temporarily ending the English threat and greatly expanding the royal domain at the same time. Louis IX (1226-1270) behaved as the arbiter of Christianity and participated in the Seventh and Eighth Crusades and was quickly canonized by the Catholic Church.

The fourteenth century and the first half of the fifteenth century saw France plunge into a serious crisis, the expressions of which are multiple. The Hundred Years’ War, fought against England and born of a problem of succession at the head of the kingdom of France, ravaged the country. However, the crisis of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was not only political or military; it was also demographic: from 1347, the Black Death killed at least a third of the kingdom’s population; social: peasant and urban insurrections multiplied; but also economic and religious. If the monarchy is also affected by this crisis, it comes out strengthened: the central power, which has moved to the Loire Valley, acquires new institutions, sets up a permanent army and tax, and begins the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance.

From the Renaissance to the absolute monarchy (sixteenth to eighteenth century)

From 1494, the French sovereigns fought multiple wars in Italy, then against the emperor Charles V. Nevertheless, the reigns of Francis I (1515-1547) and his son Henry II (1547-1559) were mainly marked by a strengthening of royal power, which tended to become absolute, and by a literary and artistic Renaissance strongly influenced by Italy.

In 1539, the ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts made French the administrative and judicial language of the kingdom. However, the unity of France around the person of the king was shaken up in the second half of the sixteenth century by the religious problem: between 1562 and 1598, eight wars of religion followed one another between Catholics and Calvinists. This religious crisis is coupled with an economic and above all political crisis. In 1598, King Henry IV (1589-1610) put an end to the wars of religion by the Edict of Nantes, which gave partial freedom of worship to Protestants.

Louis XIII (1610-1643) and his ministers Richelieu and Mazarin faced opposition from nobles anxious to regain their former powers. At the same time, France fought several victorious wars (including the Thirty Years’ War) and began to form a first colonial empire, mainly in New France, the West Indies and on the road to India. Louis XIV affirmed more than ever the absolute character of his power: the “Sun King” considered himself the “lieutenant of God on Earth” and built the Palace of Versailles, the symbol of his power.

He surrounded himself with artists and scholars and worked for the religious unity of his kingdom by resuming the persecution of Protestants and revoking the Edict of Nantes by the Edict of Fontainebleau. Despite the critical financial situation of the monarchy, Louis XIV fought several wars against a Europe united against him while the Marquis de Vauban built a network of fortified cities on the borders of the kingdom. Although these wars initially led to French victories, several military defeats and famines tarnished the end of his reign.

Louis XV (1715-1774), great-grandson and successor of Louis XIV, also led several wars, with contrasting results. In 1763, by the Treaty of Paris that ended the Seven Years’ War, France gave up its possessions in North America, but in the same decade acquired Lorraine and Corsica. Meanwhile, France is experiencing strong demographic and economic vitality. The growth of agricultural production is accompanied by proto-industrialization, especially in the textile sector, as well as a boom in the intellectual and cultural fields. However, Louis XVI, who acceded to the throne in 1774, proved unable to find a solution to the over-indebtedness of the monarchy and had to convene the Estates General in 1789.

Revolutions, republics, monarchies and empires (1789-1914)

The delegates sent to the Estates General, which opened on 5 May 1789, quickly exceeded the powers attributed to them and set themselves up as a National Constituent Assembly. The king could not prevent the Constituent Assembly from deciding to abolish privileges on the night of 4 August and then adopt the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen on 26 August. The motto Liberty, Equality, Fraternity appears in the public debate, especially in 1790 in a speech by Maximilien Robespierre on the organization of the National Guard. After an attempt at constitutional monarchy, the Republic was born on September 22, 1792, and Louis XVI, convicted of treason, was guillotined by the judgment of the National Convention on 21/01/1793.

The revolutionary France then experienced several years of wars and executions until the establishment of the Directory in 1795. It was on 27 pluviôse years II (15 February 1794), that the tricolor flag was established by the National Convention, by decree stating that “the flag and the national flag shall be formed of the three national colors arranged in three equal stripes so that the blue is attached to the guard of the flag, the white in the middle and the red floating”.

On November 9, 1799, General Napoleon Bonaparte overthrew the Directory in a coup d’état and replaced it with the Consulate; five years later, he was crowned Emperor of the French. Napoleon I created or reformed many institutions, and his multiple military victories put half of the European population under his control in the early 1810s. The decline was nevertheless rapid: after an ephemeral abdication and a brief return to power, the Emperor was definitively defeated at Waterloo on June 18, 1815.

France then began a second experiment of constitutional monarchy, during which the kings Louis XVIII (1814-1824) and especially Charles X (1824-1830) questioned part of the achievements of the Revolution. A few weeks after conquering Algiers, Charles X was overthrown in 1830 by the Trois Glorieuses, a revolutionary movement that brought Louis-Philippe to the throne. If the latter was then considered a reformer, the protest soon mounted, despite the economic boom that France was experiencing at that time.

In February 1848, a new revolution broke out, whose objectives were no longer only political, but also social. The short-lived Second Republic, which was then set up, established universal male suffrage and abolished slavery in the colonies as well as the death penalty for political reasons. However, it was overthrown by its president Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, who was crowned emperor in 1852.

If the first years of the Second Empire were those of an authoritarian regime, Napoleon III began a liberal turn in 1860, which did not prevent a rise in political opposition, while industrial and railway development accelerated. The defeat of France at the hands of Germany in the process of unification, in 1870 and 1871, is a double turning point in the history of the country: the emperor capitulates on September 2, 1870, and the Republic is proclaimed on the 4th, while Prussia annexes Alsace-Lorraine. The French defeat also provoked the dramatic episode of the Paris Commune, crushed in May 1871 by government troops.

Despite its chaotic birth, the Third Republic is the longest political regime in France since 1789. The Republicans gradually implemented their political project: school was made free, secular and compulsory in 1881-1882, freedom of the press and assembly were granted in 1881, divorce and trade unions were allowed in 1884, and the churches were separated from the state in 1905.

At the same time, France acquired a vast colonial empire, which would be the second in the world after that of the United Kingdom in 1914: to the possessions in India and Algeria were added over the years Indochina, the protectorates of Tunisia and Morocco, equatorial and west Africa and Madagascar. While several political crises follow one another — the boulangist crisis, the decoration scandal, the Panama scandal, the Dreyfus affair — the main threat to the Republic now comes from outside, where war appears more and more imminent.

France in the two world wars (1914-1945)

Through the game of alliances, France entered the war at the beginning of August 1914 against Germany, alongside the United Kingdom and the Russian Empire. The First World War, which caused 1.4 million French victims and caused much destruction in the northeast of the country, ended on 11 November 1918 in favor of the Triple Entente. In addition to the return of Alsace-Lorraine, France will receive part of the German reparations provided for by the Treaty of Versailles while obtaining security guarantees. Nevertheless, these were not enough to avoid in 1940, a new invasion by Germany following the reconstruction of the German army and the remilitarization of the left bank of the Rhine.

After a few years of laborious reconstruction, marked by an effort of immigration and productivity to compensate for the shortage of labor in the mines, steel or automobile, France struggled to regain its pre-war economic strength before experiencing strong growth from 1924. It will be affected long after most other powers by the crisis of the 1930s. However, if this crisis is late, it is lasting and profound. In addition to the economic difficulties, there was a political crisis, despite the hope raised by the coming to power in 1936 of the Popular Front. Finally, when France declared war on Nazi Germany on 3 September 1939, it had just emerged from the most serious crisis of the Third Republic.

After eight months without fighting (the “funny war”), the Wehrmacht invaded the northeast of France on 10 May 1940 and Marshal Philippe Pétain requested an armistice on 22 June. The latter obtained full powers on 10 July, thus signing the end of the Third Republic and the birth of the Vichy regime. He pursued a conservative, traditionalist and anti-Semitic policy, and collaborated with the Third Reich. However, resistance is organized inside and outside the country.

The Allied landing of 6 June 1944 in Normandy marked the end of the Nazi occupation and the beginning of the liberation of Europe. In total, this conflict will have killed fewer French soldiers than the previous one, but the civilian victims are numerous — at least 330,000 civilian victims, including 75,000 Jews living on French territory who were killed during the Holocaust — and the psychological and political wounds due to the debacle of 1940, the collaboration and then the settling of scores during the purge are long to heal.

The Liberation, Gaullism and political crisis (1945-1968)

A period of renewal then began for France. If General de Gaulle, head of the Free France, could not prevent the adoption of a constitution close to that of the Third Republic, the post-war period saw the creation of Social Security and the right to vote granted to women. France of the Fourth Republic chose the Western side in the Cold War that began at that time, began with difficulties (wars in Indochina and Algeria) the decolonization of Asia and Africa and participated in the beginnings of European construction. At the same time, the country began a period of modernization and strong economic growth that the economist Jean Fourastié called “Trente Glorieuses”.

On1 June 1958, during a serious political crisis linked to the Algerian war, General de Gaulle was sworn in as President of the Council by the National Assembly with the task of giving the Republic a new constitution: the Fifth Republic gave the President broader powers vis-à-vis Parliament. Charles De Gaulle continued and completed the decolonization of Africa and affirmed the independence of France from the United States.

To this end, it provides the civil and military nuclear France, and with a space program that will make France the third largest space power in history. But the student and social crisis of May 1968 revealed a divide between the aspirations of the youth (especially students) in the face of a power portrayed as too conservative. However, General de Gaulle took control of the situation by causing the dissolution of the National Assembly on May 30, 1968, after which the French gave him a large presidential majority. He resigned in 1969 following the failure of the referendum on Senate reform and regionalization. However, Gaullism remained in power for another five years, under the figure of the President of the Republic Georges Pompidou.

Since May 68

In 1974, a post-Gaullist period began with the election of a president from the center-right: Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. As France gradually entered the crisis of the 1970s, the first years of his mandate were marked by several laws accrediting the changes in French society, such as the Veil law which legalized the voluntary termination of pregnancy (abortion) or the lowering of the age of civil majority from 21 to 18 years. Another turning point came in 1981, when a socialist president, François Mitterrand, was elected. Faced with the worsening economic situation, it is initially attempting a policy of recovery, while adopting symbolically strong measures such as the abolition of the death penalty.

If François Mitterrand was re-elected in 1988, France experienced between 1986 and 1988 and then between 1993 and 1995 two periods of “cohabitation”, a situation hitherto unprecedented where the president did not belong to the same party as his government and which offered a new reading of the institutions. This situation recurred between 1997 and 2002, but in reverse, when a right-wing president, Jacques Chirac, was elected in 1995, and the legislative elections of 1997 brought the socialist Lionel Jospin to the head of the Government.

In 2002, France abandoned its national currency to adopt the single European currency. The presidential election of 2002 was marked by the elimination of Lionel Jospin in the first round in favor of Jean-Marie Le Pen, a candidate of the extreme right. A large part of the electorate then turned to Jacques Chirac who was re-elected.

The Raffarin and Villepin governments distinguished themselves by the opposition of France to the Iraq war. In 2005, a majority of citizens voted “no” in the referendum on the ratification of the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe. If Nicolas Sarkozy, president from 2007, led the party of his predecessor at the time of his election and was a member of his government, the policy he leads is intended to be “rupture”. The “opening” government that François Fillon forms with personalities not only from the right, but also from the center and the left, must however face the economic crisis that came in 2008-2009 from the United States.

In 2012, the socialist François Hollande was elected president, after becoming his party’s candidate after the first open primaries in the history of the Republic. With a socialist majority in both houses of Parliament for the first time under the Fifth Republic, he led a policy marked by an increase in taxation and then by a social-liberal turn and by the opening of civil marriage to same-sex couples. The 2017 presidential election follows the holding of open primaries in the two political camps that have hitherto provided for the presidents of the Fifth Republic, but sees the elimination of their candidates in the first round.

Emmanuel Macron, former deputy secretary general of President Hollande’s cabinet and then minister of the economy, founded his own movement and won two-thirds of the votes in the second round of the election against the National Front candidate, Marine Le Pen. Elected at the age of 39, he is the youngest French president in history and the second youngest French head of state since the appointment in 1799 of Napoleon Bonaparte as First Consul (at the age of 30).

Since 1945, France has been affected by several waves of terrorist attacks, in particular by Islamist terrorism since 1995, which led the same year to the creation of the Vigipirate plan. After a series of particularly deadly attacks in 2015, President François Hollande decreed a state of emergency, which was extended until November 2017.

In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic is causing a major health crisis and a major economic recession; President Emmanuel Macron decrees a state of health emergency, which imposes a generalized confinement of the population, and adopts massive budgetary measures to support the economy.

Politics and Administration of France

France is a liberal democracy, whose government has the form of a republic. The foundations of the current political and administrative organization of France were laid down in 1958 by the Constitution of the Fifth Republic. According to the first article of the Constitution, “France is an indivisible, secular, democratic and social Republic”. Since 2003, the same article also states that “its organization is decentralized”.

Organization of powers

The organization of powers in France is defined by the Constitution of 1958, amended several times; however, the role of each institution is defined both by the practice observed since 1958 and by the text of the Constitution. France has an original political regime by the broad power available to both parliament and the President of the Republic, which has led constitutionalists to speak of a “presidentialized parliamentary system”, a “semi-presidential regime” or a “bi-representative parliamentary system”.

Legislative power belongs to the French Parliament, which consists of two chambers, the National Assembly and the Senate. The National Assembly, the lower house of Parliament, is made up of 577 deputies, elected for five years by direct universal suffrage by a first-past-the-post system in two rounds in constituencies divided within the departments. The Senate, the upper house, is made up of 348 senators elected for six years by 150,000 electors (mainly local elected officials) and is therefore considered less representative than the National Assembly. The National Assembly is more powerful than the Senate in the event of a prolonged disagreement over the adoption of a law with the latter.

The executive power belongs primarily to the President of the Republic, elected for five years by direct universal suffrage by first-past-the-post voting in two rounds. The President of the Republic is the Head of State and the Head of the Armed Forces, he promulgates laws and can dissolve the National Assembly. It appoints the Prime Minister and, on his proposal, the members of the Government. The Government may be overthrown by a motion of censure adopted by the National Assembly. When the parliamentary majority and the president do not belong to the same political party, this is called cohabitation.

The judiciary, on the other hand, is separate from the other two, although the President of the Republic has a right of pardon. It is itself subdivided into an administrative order, the highest court of which is the Council of State, and a judicial order, the highest court of which is the Court of Cassation. French law, of Romano-civilist tradition, provides that any accused, before being convicted, is presumed innocent, and that a case may be retried on appeal at the request of one of the parties.

The conformity of laws with the Constitution, the regularity of elections and, more broadly, respect for institutions are monitored by the Constitutional Council.

Territorial division and decentralization

A distinction is made between metropolitan France and the overseas regions, which are administered within the framework of the general rules, and New Caledonia, the overseas collectivities and the overseas territories, which have different statuses. The metropolitan France and the overseas regions are divided into multiple territorial collectivities spread over three levels: the commune, the department and the region.

There are also territorial collectivities with special status such as the single territorial collectivities which encompass the competencies of the department and the region or the European collectivity of Alsace. These local authorities are at the same time administrative districts in which the State intervenes through its decentralized services.

The municipalities, which number 35,416 in metropolitan France on 1 January 2020, generally correspond to the territory of a city or village; they are governed by a municipal council, which elects a mayor, both an agent of the territorial collectivity and a representative of the State in the municipality. Since the 1990s, cooperation between municipalities has been strengthened by the emergence of public institutions for inter-municipal cooperation, whose role is increasing.

The departments, created during the French Revolution, are now 99 in number, including 5 overseas. They are governed by a departmental council whose members are elected from within the cantons and the State is represented by a prefect. As for the 18 French regions, whose existence is more recent, they are governed by a regional council and the State is represented by a regional prefect. To these territorial collectivities are added other territorial divisions, such as the canton, the arrondissement or more recently the country, but they do not have elected leaders.

Compared to its European neighbors, France has long been marked by strong political centralization, with local and regional authorities having relatively weak powers. Nevertheless, this situation has changed a lot since the early 1980s, first in 1982 and 1983 with the Defferre Laws (called a posteriori Act I of decentralization), then between 2002 and 2004 under the Raffarin government (Act II). In 2010, the competencies of local and regional authorities are numerous, and concern in particular schools, transport, economic development and social action.

Nevertheless, the overlapping of multiple levels and the often-blurred boundary between the competencies of the different local authorities is the source of debates on the future of decentralization on which the Fillon government focused between 2008 and 2010. The Valls government is continuing this process, called Act III of decentralization, by proposing a new division into 18 regions, effective from 1 January 2016 and the regional elections of December 2015.

France

The French territories outside geographical Europe, which correspond to former colonies that remained French, are subject to administrative and legal regimes that are very different from each other. These territories, whose economic situation is generally worse than that of the metropolis, benefit from numerous State aids.

Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Martinique, Reunion and, since 2011, Mayotte are overseas departments and regions. These five territories differ from the rest of France’s overseas territories by their status in all respects similar to that of metropolitan regions, although French laws may provide for specific provisions concerning them. These overseas regions are part of the outermost regions of the European Union, and are subject to European legislation, which applies there as of right.

On the other hand, the other French overseas territories, with the exception of the collectivities of Saint-Barthélemy and Saint-Martin, are not part of the European Union, although their inhabitants have European citizenship. First of all, these are the five overseas collectivities, with very varied statuses: French Polynesia, Saint-Barthélemy, Saint-Martin, Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon and Wallis-et-Futuna. Although the State retains certain exclusive prerogatives, they are largely subject to specific legislation and benefit from the legislative specialty.

New Caledonia, for its part, is a sui generis territorial collectivity, with very advanced autonomy, where the question of independence is part of the debate within the territory, including by referendum. Finally, the French Southern and Antarctic Territories and Clipperton Island, which do not host any permanent inhabitants, are managed directly by the State or its representative.

• Guadeloupe
• Guyana
• Martinique
• Mayotte
• La Reunion

Political trends, parties and elections

The French political system, and in particular the first-past-the-post vote that prevails in presidential and legislative elections, tends towards a bi-polarization or tri-polarization of political life. Consequently, since the beginning of the Fifth Republic, there has been a tendency towards party regrouping with frequent reversals. However, the audience of the main parties tends to decrease in favor of the smaller parties. The French political landscape has undergone three major changes since the 1980s: the fall in the audience of the French Communist Party, the gradual decline of the centrist electorate and the increase in the vote for far-right parties. In addition, abstention concerns an increasing number of voters.

Since the 1990s, the two main French parties have been Les Républicains (LR) — Rally for the Republic (RPR) before 2002, then Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) from 2002 to 2015 — and the Socialist Party (PS). The Republicans movement is a right-wing and center-right party, a member of the European People’s Party. The Socialist Party is a left-wing and center-left party, a member of the Party of European Socialists.

In 2012, the President of the Republic, the Prime Minister, most ministers, deputies, senators and presidents of regional or general councils are members. Many other parties participate in the political life of France: the most important are the National Front (FN, nationalist far-right, populist, sovereignist and opposed to immigration), the Union of Democrats and Independents (UDI, center and center-right), the Democratic Movement (MoDem, center), the Radical, Social and Liberal Movement (center-left to center-right), Europe Ecology The Greens (ecologists), the French Communist Party (PCF, communist left) and La France Insoumise (radical and eco-socialist left).

The presidential and legislative elections of 2017, however, led to a recomposition of the French political landscape, marked by the elimination in the first round of the candidates of the two parties that had previously held the presidency of the Republic, and the election of a young candidate who entered active politics under the presidency of François Hollande without being an active member of the PS, Emmanuel Macron. The movement created by the latter on a centrist, Europhile and social-liberal line, and bringing together personalities from the center-left, center, center-right and civil society, La République en Marche, then obtained a majority in the National Assembly. However, this party is still poorly represented in the Senate and in the assemblies of local authorities.

Independence, peripheral nationalist or regionalist movements exist in several metropolitan or overseas territories, but few of them have acquired effective importance (through parliamentary representation or participation in local executives), for example: the Breton Democratic Union (UDB, left to center-left socialist and social-democratic, regionalist and autonomist) and For Brittany! (ecologist, socialist and regionalist left) in Brittany; the Pè a Corsica coalition (nationalist, uniting autonomists and separatists) in Corsica and the Occitan Partit (POC, ecologist, Occitanist and autonomist left) in the Midi.

There is also the Martinican Independence Movement (MIM, separatist and regionalist left), the Party for the Liberation of Martinique (PALIMA, far left independentist), the Martinique Progressive Party (PPM, socialist and autonomist left) and the Rassemblement Democratic for Martinique (RDM, center-left social-democratic autonomist) in Martinique; the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS, itself made up of several parties, Kanak nationalist, separatist and Melanesian socialist) in New Caledonia; the Tavini huiraatira (or simply Tavini, left to center-left separatist) in French Polynesia.

Public finance

In France, compulsory levies accounted for 46.2% of GDP in 2017, the highest rate among OECD countries, and this rate is trending upwards. Social contributions account for almost 38% of the total, ten points higher than the OECD average; conversely, France is the developed country where income and corporate taxes account for the lowest share of total compulsory taxes.

Despite the high rate of compulsory taxation, public expenditure clearly exceeds it, totalling 56.8% of GDP in 2015. As a result, the public deficit is high, reaching 2.68% of GDP in 2017, but it has been falling steadily since 2009, when it reached 7.17% of GDP. Since 1974, France has never achieved a budget surplus.

The public debt of France stood at 98.4% of GDP at the end of 2018, or 2,315.3 billion euros. Since 2002, France’s public debt has never been less than 60% of GDP. France is nevertheless required to comply with the criteria of the Euro Area Stability and Growth Pact, which limits the budget deficit to 3% of GDP and public debt to 60% of GDP, as well as the criteria of the 2012 European Fiscal Compact which limits the structural deficit to 0.5% of GDP for the medium-term budgetary objective.

Until 2012, the three main credit rating agencies all assigned their maximum ratings to France. However, because of the deterioration in the state of French public finances following the economic crisis of 2007-2008, they are revising their rating downwards. On November 19, 2012, Moody’s downgraded its rating from Aaa to Aa1, and on November 18, 2015, from Aa1 to Aa2.Standard & Poor’s downgraded its rating from AAA to AA+ on January 13, 2012, and from AA+ to AA on November 8, 2013.

Finally, the Fitch agency revised its rating from AAA to AA+ on July 12, 2013, then from AA+ to AA on December 12, 2014. The rating agencies welcomed the election of Emmanuel Macron as President of the Republic in 2017 and raised their rating outlook. As of April 19, 2018, china’s rating agency Dagong gave France A rating with a stable outlook, it believed that despite the country’s improving economic situation, the government’s reforms to reduce the level of public debt and accelerate the growth rate were too slow.

Defense

Forces	APG	EMA	Army	Navy	DGA	Air and Space Force	National Gendarmerie
Official websites	136	137	138	139	140	141	142

France has the fifth largest defense budget in the world, according to SIPRI data. It is the seventh largest military power in the world, one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and, as such, legally recognized as one of the five “nuclear-weapon states” (EDAN) by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of nuclear weapons. It is one of the members of NATO which it has Allied Command Transformation (ACT), which is one of two military command posts. The French Army is one of the five most financially endowed in the world and, together with the British Army, carries out the bulk of European military operations. France devoted 2.2% of its GDP to it in 2013 (i.e., a budget of €45.32 billion).

The military forces are divided into four main armies: the Army, the French Navy, the Air and Space Force and the National Gendarmerie. Since 1996, the Army has become professional and compulsory military service has been replaced by a Mixed Defense and Citizenship Day. With a capacity of about 350,000 troops, it is deployed around the world, as part of operations outside the Sahel (Mali and Chad in particular), in the Central African Republic, Lebanon and Iraq, but also as part of forces pre-positioned under international treaties in Djibouti, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon and the United Emirates. Not to mention the troops positioned in overseas France. It also mobilized more than 1,000 men as part of the Vigipirate plan.

The country is also the world’s third largest arms exporter and is criticized and questioned by several non-governmental organizations for the role that these weapons play in various international conflicts.

Membership in international organizations

France is one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and participates in the life of many international organizations, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the Council of Europe, the G7, the G20 or the International Organization of La Francophonie.

Since 1945, regardless of the majority in power, Europe has been a major axis of French foreign policy. Two of the seven Fathers of Europe — Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman — are French; one of the objectives was then to avoid a new world war by facilitating Franco-German reconciliation. Nevertheless, the position of France and the French vis-à-vis Europe has often been ambiguous: from the rejection by the National Assembly of the Treaty establishing the European Defense Community in 1954 to that by referendum of the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe in 2005, french halts to European integration have been numerous.

Since the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, there have been more and more areas in which the European Union has exclusive competence. A large part of the law applicable in France is in 2010 of European origin, especially since currently European law takes precedence over national law. France, the fifth power, weighs even more on the world stage thanks to the European Union. The unification of the European market and the introduction of a single currency in 1999 have led to profound changes in the French economy, the beneficial nature of which is debated. Although France is the main beneficiary of the common agricultural policy, it is one of the net contributor countries to the European Union budget.

Foreign policy and diplomacy

Since the presidency of General de Gaulle (1958-1969), foreign policy of France has been characterized by a desire for independence, particularly the United States, which has resulted in the development by France of nuclear weapons and the withdrawal of France from NATO’s integrated command from 1966 to 2009. France was seen from the 1960s to the early 2000s as an ally of the Arab-Muslim world, critical of the policies of the State of Israel.

The network of diplomatic representations in France is the third largest in the world, with currently 156 embassies and 97 consular posts spread over five continents.

France assists developing countries, particularly in Africa. Official development assistance represented 0.36% of French gross national income in 2014, a rate that is declining, and lower than that of the United Kingdom or Germany.

Republican symbols

According to the constitution of the Fifth Republic, France has several emblems, mostly dating from the French Revolution. The flag of France consists of three vertical stripes of equal width, blue, white and red. The national anthem is La Marseillaise, a song composed by Rouget de Lisle in Strasbourg during the French Revolution and sometimes criticized for the violence of his text. Finally, the French Republic’s motto is: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.

In addition, several unofficial symbols exist to represent France. In particular, the bust of Marianne, a woman wearing the Phrygian cap, adorns town halls, and her face is depicted on postage stamps and French sides of euro cents.

Since 1999, the Government of France has adopted a logo recalling the country’s flag and motto, as well as the figure of Marianne. This logo appears in the header of all documents published by the French administration. In 2020, the government graphic charter is modernized to adapt to new formats and new uses of communication.

Population and society

Demography

According to the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE), 67,064,000 people live in France on 1 January 2020 (excluding COM and New Caledonia), including 64,898,000 in metropolitan France and 2,166,000 in the overseas departments. If we also include the approximately 628,000 inhabitants of the overseas collectivities (French Polynesia, Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, Wallis and Futuna, Saint-Martin and Saint-Barthélemy) and New Caledonia, the population of all French territories reaches about 67.7 million inhabitants, or about 0.9% of the world’s population.

A general national census had been held at regular intervals since 1801, but since January 2004, the census has been carried out annually in municipalities with 10,000 or more inhabitants, excluding overseas collectivities, and every five years elsewhere.

After being relatively low in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries — France experienced a rapid and weak demographic transition — France’s population growth has become one of the highest in Europe, combining a birth rate higher than the European average (800,000 births in 2015 against 600,000 deaths) and a positive migration balance (about 47,000 individuals in 2015): France’s population grew 0.4% in 2015.

In 2015, the fertility rate in France is about 1.96 children per woman. In 2014, 29.2% of newborns (excluding Mayotte, COM and New Caledonia) had at least one parent born abroad and 25.7% had at least one parent born outside the European Union.

According to Eurostat projections, France is expected to have 72.7 million inhabitants in 2040, 75.6 million in 2060, and 78.8 million in 2080 (excluding the Overseas Territories and New Caledonia).

In addition, the structure of the age pyramid has been changing since the beginning of the twenty-first century. The share of the oldest population is increasing, due to both the increase in life expectancy (France enjoys one of the highest life expectancies in the world) and the arrival in old age of the baby boom generation — a phenomenon commonly known as the grandpa boom. The proportion of people over 60 in the French population increased from 17% to 25% between 1980 and 2016 and should approach a third in 2050 according to INSEE.

Immigration, foreign population and visible minorities

In 2015, according to historian Pascal Blanchard, between 12 and 14 million French people (or 18% to 22% of the total population) have at least one of their grandparents born in a non-European territory. On 19/02/2020, the President of the French Republic declares that 10 million inhabitants of France of French nationality had relatives in Africa.

In 2010, according to the United Nations international definition (“person born in a country other than the one where he or she resides”), France welcomed 7.2 million immigrants, or 11.1% of the population, of whom 5.1 million (7.8%) were born outside the European Union. It ranks sixth in the world, behind the United States (42.8 million), Russia (12.3), Germany (9.8), Saudi Arabia (7.3), Canada (7.2) but ahead of the United Kingdom (7.0), Spain (6.4) and Italy (4.8).

France is also one of the countries in the European Union with the highest proportion of people with an immigrant background (1st and 2nd generations) among people aged 25 to 54 with 13.1% of immigrants and 13.5% of children of at least one immigrant, for a total of 26.6%, ahead of the United Kingdom (24.4%), the Netherlands (23.5%), Belgium (22.9%), Germany (21.9%) and Spain (20.2%). According to the French definition (INSEE), more restrictive (born foreigners outside the territory), France counted in 2015, 6.170 million immigrants, or 9.3% of the population.

Since 1946, the number and share of immigrants in France has increased steadily: 1.986 million in 1946 (4.98% of the total population), 4.037 million in 1982 (7.43% of the total population), 5.342 million in 2008 (8.44% of the total population). Children of immigrants accounted for 10.4% of the total population in 2013.

There were therefore 12.5 million immigrants and children of immigrants in France in 2013, or 19.3% of the population. Immigrants living in France in 2015 were 44.6% from Africa (27% in 1975), 35.4% from Europe (66% in 1975), 14.3% from Asia (4% in 1975) and 5.6% from the Americas or Oceania (2% in 1975). In 2015, 2.997 million immigrants were male and 3.171 million immigrants were female. In 2013, 39% of immigrants in France had French nationality, this figure was 28% in 1975 and 16% in 1911. France has a positive net migration. According to INSEE, the migratory surplus in 2014, in France was 32,300 people, or 0.05% of the total population.

According to Michèle Tribalat, there are 3.8 million people of Maghreb origin in France in 2011. There were also, according to Jean-Paul Gourévitch, about 3.5 million black people in France in 2008, including 2.4 million living in metropolitan France. In 2018, the Turkish community is estimated at 630,000 people in France. In 2014, there were nearly 600,000 Chinese in France, 50,000 of whom were students. It is estimated that 150,000 Vietnamese in France, they live overwhelmingly in the Paris region in 2010.

Immigrants earn on average one-third less than non-immigrants, are twice as likely not to have a degree and three times as likely to live below the poverty line. However, with an equal social situation, their educational education and income are close to those of French people born in France. According to work published in 2015 by the economist Hippolyte d’Albis, migrants allow an increase in GDP per capita and a decrease in the unemployment rate, in this they have a positive effect on the economy.

Populations of immigrant origin, and those belonging to visible minorities, are sometimes discriminated against in France. For undetermined and debatable reasons, part of this population is turning to religious fundamentalism. However, we are witnessing a certain convergence of the lifestyles of immigrant populations and long-standing French people. In 2019, the unemployment rate for immigrants is 16.3%. Some 5.4 million jobs are prohibited for non-European immigrants, or more than one in five jobs. In addition, 26.1% of immigrant families live in too narrow a dwelling, 3.7 times more than non-immigrants.

Family, sexuality and gender equality

In 2009, France was the third most fertile country in Europe after Iceland and Ireland, with the final fertility rate of women born in 1959 of 2.12 children and a total fertility rate of 1.99 children per woman (1.98 in metropolitan France).

The changes that the family experienced in France between the 1960s and the 2000s are as numerous as they are profound. Most births are planned, due to the legalization of contraception (in 1967) and the voluntary termination of pregnancy (in 1975). More than 200,000 abortions are performed each year in France. A growing proportion of couples prefer to marry the common-law union, cohabitation, or the civil solidarity pact (PACS), a union contract more flexible than marriage. As for divorces, their number increased 3.2-fold between the early 1970s and the late 2000s.

Once equated with a crime, homosexuality in France was gradually decriminalized from the end of the eighteenth century. Beginning in the 1980s, same-sex couples gradually acquired rights similar to heterosexual couples. In 1999, the PACS allowed people of the same sex to enter into a union. Since 2013, same-sex marriage and adoption of children have been permitted by law. At the same time, homophobia becomes a crime.

The place of women in French society has evolved considerably during the twentieth century, in a movement towards effective equality between the sexes. This development has been accompanied by legislative measures (e.g. the right to vote granted to women). It manifests itself particularly in the world of work. Thus, the activity rate of women increased from 58.2% in 1990 to 67.5% in 2014 (compared to 75.5% for men). However, women continue to work significantly less than men: according to the OECD, in 2017, the average weekly working time for women was 33.8 hours while it was 38.4 hours for men. In 2011, women also accounted for half of Ph.D. students as well as half of the IEP and ESC students.

Women are also increasingly represented in politics. They represent 38.8% of the deputies elected in 2017 (for 42.4% of the candidates); in comparison, they were only 12.1 percent in 2002 (39.3 percent of candidates) and 1.2 percent in 1973 (6.6 percent of candidates). In addition, since 2012, the French Government has been composed equally of men and women. Finally, for the equivalent trade, company and function, the wage gap between women and men is 2.7%.

Languages

French is the language spoken overwhelmingly in France and has been officially “the language of the Republic” since the Constitutional Law of 1992. France is the second most populous French-speaking country in the world after the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but the first in terms of the number of speakers. France pursues an active language policy in favor of French. This can be seen, among other things, within the International Organization of La Francophonie, of which France is a member, as well as within the Assemblée Parlementaire de la Francophonie, of which France is also a member.

According to a report by linguist Bernard Cerquiglini (1999), seventy-five languages other than French are spoken in France, including regional languages, languages from immigration and dialects spoken in overseas. Regional languages, although not having the status of official languages, are nevertheless recognized as belonging to the heritage of France by Article 75-1 of the Constitution.

The guarantor of the language in France is the Académie Française, an institution founded in 1634 and formalized in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu. Its legal form is that of a legal person under public law with a special status placed under the protection of the President of the Republic. In a report made public in February 2022, the Académie Française is concerned about the misuse of anglicisms in the French language.

Religions

Since the law of 9 December 1905, the Churches have been strictly separated in law from the State in France: “The Republic does not recognize, pay or subsidize any cult.”For historical reasons, Alsace-Moselle and French Guiana are exceptions. The first, because it was not French in 1905 and retained its local law after reunification; the Catholic cult, two Protestant cults and the Israelite cult are recognized.

The second is because the law of 1905 on the separation of Church and State does not apply in Guyana which remains under the regime of the royal ordinance of Charles X of August 27, 1828. The Catholic religion is also still recognized in some overseas departments and territories. The concept of secularism and the regulation that flows from it are the subjects of debates, such as, in 2003-2004, the law on religious symbols in public schools.

France is a secular country with a great ancient Catholic tradition, and although the weight of the Church is decreasing, 48% of respondents declared themselves Catholic in polls published in 2019, while a significant part of the population said they were agnostic, atheist or without religion. In addition, other religions are present in smaller proportions, including Judaism since antiquity, different branches of Protestantism since the Reformation and Islam since the arrival in France of immigrants from the Maghreb and the Middle East in the twentieth century.

Various Christian Churches (New Apostolic, Armenian Apostolic, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mennonites…) and other religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Baha’i, Alevism…) are also present on the national territory, sometimes for several centuries (Mennonites of Alsace).

In France, there were 42,258 parish churches and chapels, 2,449 Muslim places of worship and 794 synagogues.

Beyond these values, the loss of influence of religions is a major aspect of the evolution of French society in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, although it is evaluated very differently from one region to another. Nearly 80% of men and 70% of women who identify as Catholic never attend a religious service. Even among the most devout Catholics, strict obedience to the precepts of the Church is declining: 31% of hard-working practitioners who had children between 1995 and 2004 had them out of wedlock.

The French have a rather negative image of religion in general. According to an Ipsos poll published in 2017, 61% of French people think that religion causes more harm than good, and only 16% of French people think that people of faith make better citizens.

Education

In France, public schools are secular and free. While the training and remuneration of teachers, as well as the choice of curricula, are the responsibility of the State, the management of primary and secondary schools is the responsibility of local authorities. Education is currently compulsory for children between the ages of six and sixteen. In March 2018, President Emmanuel Macron announced that he wanted to lower the mandatory age of schooling to three years from the beginning of the 2019 school year.

Primary education takes place in two phases. The nursery school, which welcomes very young children, aims at their awakening, their socialization and the implementation of the fundamental tools that are language and numbers. Then, around the age of six, the children are welcomed by the elementary school, whose first objectives are the learning of reading, writing and arithmetic, and civic education.

Secondary education also takes place in two cycles. The first is taught at the college and leads to the national diploma of the patent. The second is taught at the lycée and leads to final and national examinations: the baccalaureate (professional, technological or general) and the certificate of professional aptitude (CAPA in agricultural education). In addition, nearly 17 percent of primary and secondary school students are enrolled in private schools, most of them under contracts of association with the State and often denominational.

French higher education has the particularity of bringing together universities and the system of grandes écoles, where one generally enters by competition at the end of preparatory classes. Higher education for the brevet de top technician and preparatory classes for the Grandes Ecoles are given in high schools or in private establishments. All diplomas recognized in France must be present in the national directory of professional certifications.

Since the Liberation, France has experienced a considerable expansion of schooling. In 1936, less than 3% of an age group obtained the baccalaureate; this percentage increased to 30% in 1985 and 60% in 1995. Nevertheless, this democratization of education does not eliminate social inequalities: 25% of the children of workers born between 1974 and 1978 have graduated from higher education, compared to 77% of the children of managers. These inequalities are even greater in the grandes écoles: only 2.9% of students admitted to the École Nationale d’Administration in 2008 had a working-class parent.

According to the PISA program for the comparison of national education systems, the results of the French education system are disappointing compared to other OECD Member States, in particular by the increase in inequalities since the PISA survey of 2003. Despite prevention plans, illiteracy affects 3.1 million people, or 9 percent of the population aged 18 to 65 who attended school in France.

The social background of students has a significant impact on their academic performance. In CE2, students from the poorest quarter obtain in 2019, an average score of 57 out of 100 in French and 58 in mathematics, against respectively 87 and 85 for those from the richest quarter. Inequalities are accentuated after middle school, with an access rate in general or technological secondary education twice as high for students from privileged backgrounds as for others.

The first assessment by the Ministry of National Education found that “pedagogical continuity” during the lockdown in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic was positive. According to the survey, seven out of ten teachers and eight out of ten parents were deemed satisfied.

Health and social protection

Social protection

Since its creation in 1945, Social Security has been at the heart of the French social protection system, although the State, local authorities and mutual societies also play an important role. The maintenance of the social protection schemes available to certain professions before 1945 explains the great complexity of the system, which has no less than 120 basic schemes and 1 200 supplementary schemes.

The general social security system, which has by far the largest number of members, is divided into four branches corresponding to the four major risks: illness, accidents at work and occupational diseases, risks related to old age and the family. While this social protection initially concerned only the active, it gradually spread to the entire working population as inactive in many areas, for example, when universal health coverage (UHC) was created in 1999. Moreover, at the end of the 1990s, six million people depended on social minimums.

Social benefits are mainly financed by social contributions paid by the working population (65.5% of the total in 2005), but also — and increasingly — by the State and local authorities. In 2005, social protection expenditure — in the broadest sense of the term — accounted for almost 30% of GDP and more than 45% of household adjusted disposable income. Despite the efforts made by successive governments to control social spending, it is increasing rapidly, due in particular to the increase in household health spending and the aging of the population — the ratio of active to inactive over 60 years, which was 3 in 1970, is expected to reach 2.07 in 2010 and 1.36 in 2050 in metropolitan France, according to INSEE.

Health

The French health system is largely financed by the sickness branch of Social Security. The number of doctors per 1,000 inhabitants was 3.22 in 2008, one of the highest rates in the world. The French also enjoy one of the longest life expectancies in the world, even if the premature mortality rate (before the age of 65) is high. Per capita health spending was $4,719 per year in 2008, placing France above its major European neighbors, but below Switzerland, Norway, Denmark, Luxembourg, and the United States. From 1950 to 2006, expenditure on medical care and goods increased from 2.5 percent to 8.8 percent of GDP.

Nevertheless, the health of the inhabitants of France is not optimal in all areas. Despite the fall in wine consumption since the 1960s, the French remain the second largest consumer of alcohol in Western Europe, after the Irish. 29% of 18-75 year olds smoked daily in 2005, despite intense anti-smoking campaigns.

As for illicit drugs, the most used is cannabis: 39% of men aged 18 to 25 used it in 2005, according to the French Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction. An ANSES study in 2020 reveals that “95% of the French adult population is exposed to a risk of deterioration in health due to lack of physical activity or too long a time spent sitting”. According to this survey, 5% of adults in France have sufficient physical activity to protect their health: women are more exposed than men to a lack of physical activity.

Contrary to popular belief, France does not consume significantly more antidepressants than other countries, nor is the suicide rate particularly higher than in other developed countries. The rate of mental health disorders and substance abuse, while high, is comparable to that of other Western countries.

Media

In France, it was the law of 29 July 1881 that instituted and at the same time regulated freedom of the press.

France-Presse Agency (AFP), created in 1835 by Charles Havas, is one of the three major generalist news agencies in the world, along with Reuters and the Associated Press.

If the regional, weekly and thematic press sell well in France, the national daily press of general information is little distributed outside the capital. Since then, the five main titles in this category (Le Figaro, Le Monde, Aujourd’hui en France, Libération and La Croix) have sold less than one million copies each day in 2010.

Since 1981 and the legalization of “free radios”, public radio stations managed by Radio France have been competing with private stations, often owned by large media groups. Therefore, among the first four radio stations in the cumulative audience in November-December 2009 (RTL, NRJ, France Inter and Europe 1), only the third is public. Similarly, since the appearance of the first private television channel (Canal+) in 1984, several hundred private television channels have emerged, broadcast by the terrestrial channel, by cable, by satellite or more recently by digital terrestrial television (DTT). The three main channels are TF1, France 2 and M6, only France 2 belongs to the public group France Télévisions.

As for access to the Internet, it was only really democratized in the early 2000s. In December 2018, France had 52.8 million internet users, an increase of 13 million compared to December 2012.

Between 2002 and 2009, France rose from 11th to 43rd place in reporters without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index. In 2019, France had risen to 32nd place out of 180.

In July 2020, a single platform for all public and private radio stations was created as a common digital service. It brought together branches of several radio stations, including Lagardère News, Radio France, M6 Group radios and Les Indés Radios, where users could listen to all the programs in one place at no cost.

Sport in France

France is characterized by an ancient sporting tradition and a wide variety of disciplines practiced at a high level. The country has a leading role in the organization of modern sport and its track record, since the end of the twentieth century. With a total of 840 medals won (716 in summer and 124 in winter), France is the fifth most awarded nation in Olympic history. Fencing and cycling are the disciplines in which France has the most titles (respectively 44 and 41 Olympic titles after the Vancouver Games in 2010). Paris was the host city of the Summer Olympics in 1900 and 1924; it will be for a third time in 2024. France has also hosted the Winter Olympics three times: Chamonix in 1924, Grenoble in 1968 and Albertville in 1992.

Among his other notable accolades, France has won the World Cup twice, the Davis Cup ten times and the Six Nations Tournament 25 times.

According to the Ministry of Sports, in 2010, 69% of people over the age of 15 played sports at least once a week in France. Walking, swimming and cycling were the main physical activities reported. In 2016, all French sports federations had 16,102,957 licensees; 37.5% of them were girls. In 2017, the most popular sports in France were: football (2,135,193 licensees, 5.7% girls), tennis (1,052,127 licensees, 29.1% girls), horse riding (673,026 licensees, 82.9% girls), judo (552,815 licensees, 26.7% girls), basketball (513,727 licensees, 36% girls), handball (513,194 licensees, 35.8 percent girls) and golf (407,569 licensees, 27.8 percent girls).

Nearly seven million French people practice skiing every winter, most often outside any sports organization. The French ski area was in 2015, the busiest area in the world, ahead of those of the United States and Austria.

In 2013, national sports expenditure amounted to €38.1 billion (half of which was borne by the public administration), or 1.8% of GDP. In 2015, the private sports sector in France employed 124,286 people. Every year, the Ministry of Sports awards about 12,000 sports diplomas, including nearly 8,000 BPJEPS.

The International Tennis Tournament at Roland Garros in Paris and the Tour de France Cyclists are important annual events, as can one-off events such as the 2016 Euro Football Tournament.

France is also increasingly interested in e-sports. In 2016, the Valls II government created the association France Esports. In 2018, 5 million French people had already watched at least one e-sports competition and 930,000 had already participated. It has one of the most efficient e-sports structures in Europe and the world with Team Vitality.

In addition to the colors of the flag, for French sports federations, the rooster is also used as a symbol, but it is not an official symbol.

Associative, trade union and political commitment

While voter turnout in elections is declining, protest turnout is on the other hand increasing. In 2008, 42% of French people participated in a demonstration, compared to 25% in 1981. Compared to other developed countries, France is often seen as a country where demonstrations and strikes are frequent.

But this punctual participation in protest events does not translate into a significant commitment to political parties. As for the unionization rate (8%), it is the lowest of the rich countries, although it is higher in the public sector. On the other hand, the French are very involved in the associative environment: 14 million volunteers are members of more than a million associations, which benefit from the status granted by the law of 1 July 1901.

Economy of France

The economy of France is a social market economy based on private property. There has been a relatively strong state intervention since the end of The Second World War, although this has been questioned since the 1980s. The French economy is mainly service-oriented. Compulsory taxes accounted for 46.2% of GDP in 2017, the highest rate among OECD countries, and public spending totaled 56.8% of GDP in 2015, the second highest rate in the OECD.

Population income and human development

In 2018, there were 2.147 million millionaires (in US dollars) in France, or 5% of millionaires worldwide. According to Forbes magazine, that same year there were 39 billionaires in France, making France the 9th country in the world with the most billionaires.

In 2014, according to the World Inequality Database, in France, the top 1% captured 10.8% of pre-tax national income (this figure was 11.0% in 2000, 11.5% in 1960 and 20.1% in 1920), the top 10% captured 32.6% (this figure was 33.1% in 2000, 37.7% in 1960 and 47.3% in 1920), the poorest 50 percent accounted for 22.5 percent (this figure was 21.5 percent in 2000, 18.6 percent in 1960 and 14.6 percent in 1920). Income inequality in France in the twenty-first century is therefore lower than in the twentieth century and, in the long term, tends to decrease.

The incomes of the French and their purchasing power increased throughout the 20th century and the 2000s, but unevenly within the population, which increased economic inequalities between households. Since 2014, the purchasing power of household disposable income has increased continuously in France, albeit relatively slowly: +1.2% in 2014, +0.9% in 2015, +1.8% in 2016 and +1.3% in 2017. In 2017, the savings rate (as % of gross disposable income) was 14.3% and the financial savings rate (as % of gross disposable income) was 4.4%.

Furthermore, in France, the average net monthly salary in 2015 was 2,250 euros. In 2016, according to INSEE, the median net monthly salary was €1,680 and gross disposable income per capita was €1,402 (+1% compared to 2008). The average household disposable income was €36,300 and the median household disposable income was €30,040 in 2015. In France, in the equivalent trade, enterprise and function, the wage gap between women and men is 2.7%.

In 2015, in metropolitan France, the median standard of living of the population was €20,300 per year, slightly higher than in 2014 in constant euros. The income poverty line, which corresponds to 60% of the median standard of living of the population, is 1,015 euros per month; 14.2% of the population lives below this poverty line, one of the lowest levels in the European Union. The unemployed have the highest poverty rate (37.3%).

From 1970 to 1990, the poverty rate fell sharply (-4.1 percentage points) due in particular to the improvement in the relative situation of pensioners, whose poverty rate fell by more than half thanks to the improvement in their pensions and the minimum old-age pension. Since 1996, changes in the poverty rate have been smaller. This rate decreased by 1.9 points between 1996 and 2004, rose again between 2004 and 2011 (+1.8 points), particularly due to the 2008 crisis, and has been changing recently.

In 2017, according to the United Nations, France’s Human Development Index (HDI) was 0.901, placing it 24th in the HDI world ranking. By way of comparison, in 1990 the HDI of France was 0.779. According to the World Bank, France’s GDP per capita in current dollars was $38,467 in 2017, the 24th highest GDP per capita in the world. The Gini index, which measures inequality, was calculated at 32.7 for France in 2015.

In the first quarter of 2012, INSEE counted 141,500 homeless people in France. In addition, 800,000 people do not have a personal home.

Employment

While France experienced a situation close to full employment during the Trente Glorieuses — in the 1960s alone, the French economy created 1.6 million jobs — it has been facing a situation of high unemployment since the late 1970s, despite fluctuations that have raised hopes for the return of full employment. Unemployment particularly affects the young, the less educated and foreigners.

The long-term unemployed account for one third of all unemployed and are those for whom reintegration is often the most difficult. According to INSEE, the French unemployment rate stood at 8.5% in August 2019 (its lowest level since 2009). In the second quarter of 2019, the long-term unemployment rate was 3.2%. According to economist Eric Heyer, there were 150,000 unfilled jobs in France in 2017.

On average, in 2017, 29.3 million people aged 15 to 64 in France (excluding Mayotte) were active, or 71.5% of this age group. Of these, 26.5 million were employed and 2.8 million were unemployed within the meaning of the International Labour Office (ILO); 11.7 million were inactive, i.e. not working and were not actively looking for a job or are not available to fill one. In 2017, the employment rate in France was 64.7% and the participation rate was 71.5%. In both 2017 and 2016, 18.8% of employed people worked part-time.

At the end of 2017, the private sector in France employed 19.27 million employees (+1.3% compared to 2016).

Employees accounted for 88.4% of the employed in France in 2017: 84.6% are on permanent contracts (CDI) or civil servants, 10.8% on fixed-term contracts (CDD), 3.0% on temporary contracts and 1.6% on apprenticeships.

In 2017, intermediate occupations and executives accounted for 43.7% of the employed, a proportion that increased slightly over one year. The share of manual workers, which had fallen almost continuously by nearly 10 points since the early 1980s, increased slightly in 2017 (+0.5 points, to 20.8%); that of employees (27.2%) fell slightly (-0.2 points), in line with the decline observed over the past decade. In 2017, unskilled workers and unskilled employees accounted for one in five employed persons.

In 2017, 5.664 million people worked in the public service in France. 62.5 percent of those working in the civil service are women and 37.5 percent are men. The status of the civil service is varied, with 67.8 percent civil servants, 17.9 percent contract workers, 5.5 percent military personnel and 2.5 percent assisted contracts (the remaining 6.3 percent have another status).

In 2017, in France, according to the OECD, the average weekly working time of men was 38.4 hours (a figure slightly down from 40.1 hours in 1983 in the 1980s) and that of women was 33.8 hours (also slightly down since the 1980s, it was 35.5 hours in 1983). On average, the French worked 36.1 hours per week in 2017, an extremely stable figure since 1996 (you have to go back to 1995 to have an average weekly working time of more than 37.0 hours).

Main sectors of activity

The French economy is largely oriented towards the service sector. According to the CIA’s World Factbook, in 2017, services made up 78.8% of France’s GDP, industry 19.5% and agriculture 1.7%. According to INSEE, in 2018, 76.1% of the employed population worked in the tertiary sector, 13.3% in the industrial sector, 6.7% in the construction sector and 2.5% in the agricultural sector.

By branch of activity, production in current euros in 2018 in France was, according to INSEE, €2,215.2 billion for market services (€1,187.7 billion in value-added), €939.4 billion for the manufacturing industry (€280.2 billion in value-added), €615.8 billion for non-market services (€467.5 billion in value-added), €303.7 billion for construction (€117.4 billion in value-added) and €90.0 billion for agriculture (€38.2 billion in value-added).

Agriculture and Agri-Food in France

Like other industrialized countries, France has experienced rural exodus and a fall in agricultural employment, although the latter remains proportionately higher than in other Western European countries. French agriculture was considerably modernized and mechanized in the second half of the twentieth century, notably through the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

The regional specialization of France by type of production is increasing, and some appellations of origin of agricultural products (processed or not) are preserved thanks to the AOC system, which takes into consideration a terroir, that is to say a popular and historical agricultural know-how attached to a territory. France has been gradually turning to organic farming since the end of the twentieth century. The Organic Agriculture label was created in 1985; since 2009, it has been aligned with the criteria of the European Union organic label.

France had 451,606 farms on its metropolitan territory in 2013. It had 1.02 million in 1988. The average area of farms is 61 hectares. The number of organic farms was 25,000 in 2013.

There were 885,400 farm operators in France in 2015 (-8% compared to 2010). The average age of farm managers, co-operators and partners is 51 years. The share of women among permanent agricultural workers is 30 percent.

French agricultural production for 2017 amounted to €78.8 billion including services and subsidies on products, or 3.5% of French GDP, compared with some 7% in 1980. In 2016, France generated an agri-food trade surplus (raw and processed products) of €6.1 billion. French agriculture is generously supported by the European Union. In 2015, it received €8.95 billion in cap funding, or 21% of its total budget.

France is the largest agricultural producer in the European Union: in 2016 it accounted for 17% of total EU production. France is Europe’s largest producer of beef, eggs, surimi, cereals and beet sugar. It is the world’s sixth-largest producer of butter and the world’s largest exporter of potatoes. It is also the world’s second largest producer of wine, the second largest Producer of Milk in Europe and the third largest Producer of Fruit and Vegetables in Europe.

According to UNOAA (2018 data), France is the 8th largest producer of apricots in the world, the 8th largest producer of artichokes in the world, the 5th largest producer of wheat, the 2nd largest producer of mixed cereals in the world, the 6th largest producer of whole grains in the world, the 8th largest producer in the world of mushrooms and truffles, the 1st world producer of hemp, the 8th largest producer of hemp fibers in the world, the 9th largest producer of cauliflowers and broccoli in the world and the 4th largest producer in the world of rapeseed.

In addition, France is the 7th largest producer of spinach in the world, the 7th largest producer in the world of dry beans, the 7th largest producer in the world of stone fruit, the 8th largest producer in the world of flaxseed, the 9th largest producer of sunflower seeds in the world, the2nd largest producer of green beans in the world, the 8th largest producer in the world of kiwifruit, the 1st world producer of flax fiber and tow, the 8th largest producer of fresh maize in the world, the 9th largest producer of mustard in the world, the 10th world producer of blueberries, the 8th world producer of hazelnuts, the 9th world producer of nuts, the 4th world producer of carnations, the 2nd world producer of barley, the 5th world producer of leeks and the 3rd world producer of fresh peas.

Finally, France is the 7th world producer of dry peas, the 9th world producer of apples, the 8th largest producer of potatoes in the world, the 2nd largest producer of chicory roots in the world, the 5th largest producer in the world of grapes, the 3rd largest producer in the world of buckwheat, the 2nd largest producer in the world of sugar beets and the 3rd largest producer in the world of triticale.

Greenhouse gas emissions from French agriculture have decreased in recent years, from 76,198 tonnes of CO2 equivalent in 1995 to 69,353 tonnes of CO2 equivalent in 2016, a decrease of around 10%.

Tourism

Thanks to the richness of its natural landscapes and cultural heritage, France is the most visited country in the world by foreign tourists with nearly 90 million visits in 2018. Nearly 70 million international tourists coming to France are from Europe.

Revenues related to international tourism in France amounted to US$69.89 billion in 2017. Thus, France is the second country with the highest tourism receipts, behind the United States and ahead of Spain and Thailand. In 2015, domestic tourism consumption amounted to €160 billion, or 7.2% of France’s GDP.

In 2017, Paris is the 3rd most visited city in the world, with 17.44 million international tourists; it is surpassed by London (19.83 million tourists) and Bangkok (20.05 million tourists). However, if we consider Paris as an agglomeration (as is the case for London and Bangkok in the ranking because, in their cases, the city-center merges with the agglomeration unlike Paris), the number of international tourists rises to 33.8 million. The Louvre Museum is the most visited museum in the world (10 million visitors in 2018) and Notre-Dame de Paris is the most visited monument in Europe (14 million visitors in 2018).

The reasons for this tourism are varied: it is both cultural tourism (especially in Paris), seaside tourism (especially on the Côte d’Azur), natural, business (Paris is the world’s leading destination for this type of tourism), leisure (Disneyland Paris is by far the busiest amusement park in Europe) and winter sports (in the Northern Alps in particular). The most frequented paid tourist sites are, in their majority, located in Île-de-France (Disneyland Paris, Louvre Museum, Eiffel Tower, Palace of Versailles …); some regional sites also attract many tourists, such as the castles of the Loire, Mont Saint-Michel, Rocamadour, the Castle of Haut-Koenigsbourg, the Unterlinden Museum in Colmar, the Pompidou-Metz Center or the Futuroscope Park.

Trade and crafts

Since the 1970s, the retail sector has been disrupted by the eruption of mass distribution, which accounted for two-thirds of French food spending in 2008. As a result, many small businesses have disappeared, although in 2009 there was a timid recovery, especially in city centers. The power of a few large retail companies — Carrefour, for example, is the world’s second largest group in the sector — allows them to impose, to a certain extent, low prices on producers. Despite competition from industrial companies, crafts have managed to maintain an important place in the French economy.

Industry

France is the fourth largest industrial power in the world. Despite the tertiarization of the French economy, industrial companies accounted for 12.6% of GDP and 96.5% of French exports in 2014

Its industry is characterized by contrasting developments: alongside modern and dynamic industries, which make France one of the world leaders in many fields (automotive, aeronautics, aerospace, agri-food, electronics, civil nuclear, pharmacy, cosmetics, luxury…), many traditional industries (mining, textiles, wood, footwear, shipbuilding, steel …) see their workforce and turnover fall, forcing entire regions (Nord-Pas-de-Calais and Lorraine in particular) to a painful reconversion.

The industrial decentralization of the 1960s, which allowed the development of many cities in the west and south of the country, was followed by a period of low growth in industrial production, which is sometimes explained by relocations to countries with inexpensive labor.

Even if production is increasingly done abroad, French companies remain predominant in many areas, some occupy the first place in the world market in their field (for example L’Oréal in cosmetics or Michelin in tires). In 2018, 28 French companies were included in Fortune magazine’s Global 500 ranking, making France the fifth country with the most companies in the ranking, behind the United States, China, Germany and Japan. The six French companies in the top 100 are Axa (rank 27), Total (rank 28), BNP Paribas (rank 44), Carrefour (rank 68), Crédit Agricole (rank 82) and EDF (rank 94).

The French arms industry accounted for 165,000 jobs in 2013. It covers a wide spectrum including shipbuilding (Naval Group), military aviation (Dassault Aviation, Airbus, Safran) and weapons systems (MBDA, Thales), the manufacture of armored vehicles (Nexter, Arquus). The entire military-industrial complex is coordinated by the Directorate General of Armaments (DGA). France is also a major global player in the defense sector: France’s arms exports reached €16 billion in 2015 and more than €20 billion in 2016.

• Aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle.
• Dassault Rafale.
• Char Leclerc.

Energy

After the complete disappearance of French coal production in 2005, oil, gas and especially electricity are the main energies consumed in France. While France produces crude oil only marginally, the thirteen refineries located in the territory can meet more than 90% of national demand. The French group Total, which has concessions worldwide, is the sixth-largest company in the world and the fifth-largest in the sector.

The share of gas in French energy consumption has risen sharply since the 1970s, but 97% of it is imported gas, particularly from Russia, Algeria and the North Sea. On the other hand, France produces more electricity than it consumes, thanks in particular to 56 nuclear reactors in 2021 (the second largest fleet in the world after the American fleet) which produced in 2013 nearly 74% of the country’s electricity, allowing French electricity to be very low in carbon, but whose environmental balance is the subject of debate.

France owns the most powerful nuclear power plant in Western Europe in Gravelines, operated by EDF. As for renewable energies, their share in French electricity production is increasing and in 2019 accounted for 17.2% of gross final energy consumption, largely thanks to hydroelectricity.

A nation with an autonomous space program in a European framework

In addition to civil aviation, General de Gaulle made space a national priority to preserve the independence of France. The largest space agency in Europe, CNES was created in 1961, and allowed France to become in 1965, the third nation, after the Soviet Union (Sputnik 1, 1957) and the United States (Explorer 1, 1958), to send a satellite into space by its own means; the Diamant A rocket sends the Asterix A1 satellite from the Hammaguir base (Algeria).

In 1973, France proposed to European countries a joint launcher, Ariane, operated by the European Space Agency since 1975 from French soil, at the Guiana Space Centre. The program has continued ever since and is a major technological and commercial success. In 2011, the Russian Soyuz launcher took off for the first time from French soil, marking the beginning of a very advanced collaboration with the Russian space sector.

Finally, France participates in the Galileo project is the European satellite positioning system aimed at competing with the American GPS system, as well as various interplanetary exploration probes (Rosetta, BepiColombo, Mars Express, etc.).

Research

France spends a moderately high share of its GDP on research and development (2.02% in 2009), but this expenditure is more financed by the public sector (41% in 2008) and devoted to basic research than in other countries of the European Union and a fortiori of the OECD. While French research is at the origin of many discoveries and has been rewarded on multiple occasions, the number of patents filed by French companies is relatively small, especially since the relations between private companies and public research are often considered poor.

In 2015, around 280,000 researchers worked in France, including 170,000 in companies and 110,000 in public service. The latter are grouped in universities or in public institutions such as the CNRS (generalist), the CEA (nuclear), the INRIA (computer science and applied mathematics), the INRA (agronomy). Among these institutions, LETI is positioned as one of the leading microelectronics and nanotechnology laboratories in the world, adjacent to the Minatec complex, Europe’s leading nanotechnology research center.

France also hosts major international research instruments such as the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, the Laue-Langevin Institute or the Institute for Millimeter Radio Astronomy and remains a major player in CERN. Since 2002, most of these research centers have been organized in networks with universities and companies to form competitiveness clusters (71 in 2007).

Finance and insurance

The French banking sector has long been characterized by its low concentration, the strong regulation that governed it and the large share of the public sector, but this situation changed during the 1990s and 2000s. French banks BNP Paribas, Société Général and Crédit Agricole ranked fourth, ninth and tenth in the world respectively in 2009. The insurance sector also occupies an important place in the French economy, with Axa being the leading European insurance company.

The Paris Stock Exchange, a subsidiary of Euronext since 2000, is the official stock market in France. The CAC 40 Index is a floating market capitalization-weighted index that reflects the performance of the 40 largest and most actively traded stocks listed on Euronext Paris. As of September 30, 2020, the total market capitalization of the CAC 40 components was €1,529 billion. The median market capitalization of the index components was €23.77 billion, and LVMH, Sanofi and Total were the three largest companies in the index.

France’s place in the global economy

In 2018, according to the IMF, the nominal GDP of France was $2,775.25 billion; according to this criterion, France is the 7th largest economy in the world. According to Credit Suisse, in 2018 France had an estimated total wealth of $13,883 billion, making France the 6th richest country in the world and the 3rd richest in Europe according to this criterion.

According to the Global Competitiveness Report 2018 published by the World Economic Forum, France is the 17th (out of 140) most competitive economy in the world (up one place compared to 2017).

The report welcomes the quality of French infrastructure and the high level of public health but criticizes France for its excessive number of regulations, the low digital skills of its workforce, the too-low number of teachers in schools, the too-high number of non-tariff barriers, the lack of flexibility in its labor market and the excessively high level of taxation. In the Heritage Foundation’s 2019 Index of Economic Freedom, which measures the degree of economic freedom of each country in the world, France ranks only 71st (out of 186 ranked countries) because of its high level of public spending, rigid labor market regulations, and high rate of compulsory taxation.

The French economy is highly extroverted, especially vis-à-vis its European partners (65% of French exports). This situation is partly related to the depletion or insufficiency of the country’s mineral and energy resources, which force it to import, and to the relatively small size of the country. But it is also explained by the importance of exports. According to the WTO, in 2017, France is the 8th largest exporter ($535 billion in exports) and the 6th largest importer ($625 billion in imports) of goods in the world. In terms of services, it is the 4th largest exporter ($248 billion in exports) and the 4th largest importer ($240 billion in imports) in the world.

Nevertheless, France’s foreign trade is experiencing significant difficulties. Since 2004, France has experienced an increasingly widening trade deficit (-$75.4 billion in 2009), partly due to the high level of the euro against the dollar. Between 1990 and 2006, France’s global market share of merchandise exports increased from 6.3% to 4.1%; in 2009, France was only the fifth largest importer and the sixth largest exporter in the world. According to Eurostat, this deterioration in French foreign trade is partly due to an increase in hourly labor costs.

The trade balance continues to be in deficit in 2017: the balance of goods and services recorded a deficit of €38.3 billion (€26.8 billion in 2016). This deterioration mainly reflects the dynamics of French domestic demand driven by the recovery in household consumption and business investment that supported imports of goods: +6.8% to €535.5 billion after +0.1% in 2016. In addition, the energy bill (€39 billion) increased in 2017 and weighed heavily on the trade balance, equivalent to 63% of the total deficit.

Culture of France

Over time, France has been a place for the development of arts and culture. Many important French artists, as well as immigrants, found refuge in the country; they contribute to the recognition in the West and throughout the world of its rich cultural tradition. The creation of the Ministry of Culture in 1959 helped preserve the country’s cultural heritage and make it accessible to the public. The Ministry of Culture has been very active in granting grants to artists, promoting French culture in the world, supporting festivals and cultural events, protecting historical monuments. The Government has also managed to maintain a cultural exception to defend French cinema.

With nearly 90 million visitors in 2018, France is the leading tourist destination in the world, thanks in large part to the many cultural establishments and historic buildings located throughout the territory. It has 1,200 museums hosting more than 50 million people each year. The most important cultural sites are managed by the Government, for example, through the Centre for National Monuments, which is responsible for about 85 national historic monuments.

Architecture

France has a rich architectural heritage, witness to a long history and the meeting of different civilizational traits. The 43,180 buildings protected as historical monuments include mainly residences (many castles) and religious buildings (cathedrals, basilicas, churches), but also monuments and gardens.

Inscribed on the World Heritage List

UNESCO has inscribed 44 sites in France on the World Heritage List.

Of the 845 cultural properties inscribed on the World Heritage List by UNESCO in July 2018, 39 are French, making France, along with Germany, the fourth country in the world in terms of the number of cultural sites enjoying worldwide recognition.

The French architectural heritage inscribed on the World Heritage List includes buildings of religious architecture (the Abbey of Fontenay for example), civil (the castles of the Loire), industrial (the royal saltworks of Arc-et-Senans), military (the major sites fortified by Vauban) and urban (place Stanislas de Nancy, the historic center of Strasbourg). It includes examples of architecture from all eras, from Roman architecture (the Pont du Gard) to post-war architecture (the rebuilt center of Le Havre), through masterpieces of Romanesque architecture (the Abbey of Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe), Gothic (Chartres Cathedral) and Classical architecture (the Canal du Midi).

UNE World Heritage Sites in France

• Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris.

• The castle of Chenonceau (Loire Valley).
• The Jurisdiction of Saint-Émilion.
• Lemont Saint-Michel.
• The Cordouan Lighthouse.
• The Palace of the Popes of Avignon.
• The Canal du Midi.
• The City of Carcassonne.
• The Pont du Gard.
• The Palace of Versailles, a masterpiece of classical or baroque architecture of the seventeenth century.
• The most visited monument in the world, the Eiffel Tower is an icon of Paris and France.

Buildings of historical interest

In France, since 1840, buildings of historical, architectural, heritage or cultural interest may be registered or classified as historical monuments by the State, as well as certain movable property (bells), which provides them with legal protection, as well as aid for restoration and maintenance. As of December 31, 2017, France had 45,264 listed or classified historical monuments. Important French architects have shaped the architectural heritage, in France and Europe, in all eras, with figures such as Montreuil in the Middle Ages, Lescot, Delorme and Androuet du Cerceau in the Renaissance, Mansart, Le Vau, Hardouin-Mansart, Gabriel and Ledoux in the classical and neoclassical periods, Viollet-le-Duc, Garnier and Eiffel in the nineteenth century, Auguste Perret, Le Corbusier and Jean Nouvel in contemporary times.

Visual and plastic arts

If artistic productions are attested in the space corresponding to the current France from Prehistory, we can not speak of “French art” before the beginning of the second millennium of our era, at the time when a state and a nation begin to form. From this time, French Fine Arts will be largely similar to those of the rest of Western Europe, seeing a succession of Romanesque art in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and Gothic art from the twelfth to the fifteenth century; the celebration of the power of the French monarchy, a “privileged space” (A. Chastel) and the representation of the sacred are among the privileged themes of an art mainly commissioned by political or religious power.

The Renaissance and the development of classicism in the seventeenth century and neoclassicism in the eighteenth century are the expression of both a search for order and pageantry and of ancient and Italian influences; it is also in the modern era that individual figures of artists emerge, such as the painters Fouquet, Poussin, La Tour, Lorrain , Watteau, Boucher, Chardin, Fragonard, Greuze, David, Gros and Ingres, or the sculptors Goujon, Girardon, Coysevox, Puget and Houdon.

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, France played a major role in the major Western artistic currents and revolutions: Romanticism (Delacroix and Géricault), Realism (Courbet), Impressionism (Monet, Renoir, Manet, Degas) and Neo-Impressionism (Seurat, Van Gogh, Cézanne, Gauguin), Fauvism (Matisse, Derain, Vlaminck), Cubism (Braque, Picasso, Léger) and Surrealism (Duchamp) counted French artists among their main ones. Representatives. Rodin, for his part, revolutionized sculpture at the end of the nineteenth century.

Literature and poetry

French letters have many figures who in all eras have contributed to the cultural reputation of the country. It would be futile to try to make a list, but it is possible to quote, concerning the Middle Ages, the Christian poets of Troyes and Villon; in the sixteenth century, the novelist Rabelais, the essayist Montaigne and the poets Du Bellay and Ronsard mark the Renaissance.

In the seventeenth century, the playwrights Corneille, Racine and Molière, the poet Boileau, the fabulist La Fontaine and the philosopher Pascal endeavored to maintain or restore order by reason; in the eighteenth century, the authors of the Enlightenment Voltaire, Diderot, Montesquieu and Rousseau, the novelists Prévost, Laclos and Sade and the playwrights Marivaux and Beaumarchais castigated the society of their time while addressing subjects hitherto prohibited.

In the nineteenth century, the novel reached a peak with Stendhal, Balzac, Hugo, Dumas, Flaubert and Zola, but the other genres were not left out, as shown by the memorialist Chateaubriand and the poets Lamartine, Musset, Baudelaire, Vigny, Rimbaud and Mallarmé; also the theoreticians Comte and Durkheim.

The twentieth century marked the problems that followed contemporary productions; we can mention the poets Apollinaire, Éluard, Aragon, Char and Prévert; the novelists and essayists Proust, Gide, Céline, Sartre, Beauvoir, Yourcenar, Duras, Saint-Exupéry, Vian, Camus, Duras, Sagan, Gracq, Sarraute, Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault, Guattari, Bourdieu, Ricœur, Lacan and Lévi-Strauss; also the playwrights Giraudoux, Cocteau and Ionesco.

In the twenty-first century, names emerge, including those of J.M.G. Le Clézio, Patrick Modiano, Virginie Despentes, Jacques Rancière, Alain Badiou, Didi-Huberman, Michel Houellebecq, Erik Orsenna, Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt, Pascal Quignard, Pierre Michon, Christine Angot, or Eliette Abecassis.

To date, France is the country with the most Nobel Prizes in literature, with fifteen laureates.

France is the 4th country publishing the most books in the world behind China, the United States and the United Kingdom. Thus, in 2015, 107,000 new books were published in France.

Performing arts in France

Since a 1999 law, the administrative category of “performing arts” has been invented to group together all public performances defined by “the physical presence of at least one performing artist receiving remuneration during the public performance of a work of the mind”, i.e. the academic arts of theatre, dance, orchestral music and opera, with popular arts such as circus, street arts, puppetry arts, musical theatre, street performance and instrumental music.

Theatre

The first vestiges of the theater on the current French territory date from ancient Greek culture. It then developed throughout Gaul during the Roman period, so much so that we find many buildings of this time still today. It then takes different forms over time.

In the Middle Ages, liturgical dramas were the most popular genre. The genre was further enriched in the Renaissance: farces, such as Pathelin (1485); tragedies and comedies, with humanist playwrights such as Étienne Jodelle, Jacques Grevin or Robert Garnier; or Commedia dell’arte, imported by Italian actors.

François Hédelin and Pierre Corneille put profound reforms to the profession, which made it impose itself from the baroque to the movement of classicism in the seventeenth century, then Molière and Jean Racine, among others, will end at the foundation of the Comédie-Française in 1680, the oldest company in the world today in office. The appearance of the neo-classical theater of the Enlightenment, will suppose an era of great changes in the eighteenth century, dominated by Regnard, Marivaux and Beaumarchais, the affair of the Marriage of Figaro (1778) which announces the future of the French Revolution, for example.

The work of François-Joseph Talma marks an early nineteenth century; the romantic theater is codified by Victor Hugo in the preface of Cromwell (1827), and its development puts various confrontations between his contemporaries, Musset and Vigny, particularly at the Battle of Hernani. In protest, he equates the currents of realism with Eugène Scribe and naturalism with Émile Zola, which is worth triggering deep reflections on the subject of dramatic art, inspiring the work of important figures such as Chekhov, Ibsenet Stanislavski. In response, symbolism appeared, with Paul Fort, Lugné-Poe and Maeterlinck.

The beginning of the twentieth century and the contributions of Alfred Jarry, are conducive to great changes and reflections on the subject. The theatre of the absurd refuses simple explanations and abandons too traditional characters, its best known author is Eugène Ionesco; the avant-garde theatre was profoundly marked by Dadaism and Surrealism, the technique fitting particularly well with the theatre, especially in Antonin Artaudet Guillaume Apollinaire, surrounded the routes of experimental theatre, performance and many of the movements and expressions of contemporary art.

Other theatre experiments involved decentralization, regional theater, “popular theater” (intended to bring the working class to the theater). The Festival d’Avignon was created in 1947 by Jean Vilar, who also played an important role in the creation of the Théâtre National Populaire. After May 1968, a large part of the theatrical creation came from the MJC, established by André Malraux throughout France; among the main contemporary theatrical figures are Jacques Lecoq, Ariane Mnouchkine, Bernard-Marie Koltès, Jean-Luc Lagarce, Claude Régy, Christian Siméon and Florian Zeller. France speaks at prestigious events such as the Grand Prix de Littérature Dramatique, the SACD Prize and the Molières Ceremony, which is the most important award ceremony for theatre in France.

Dance

Dance is a major vector of French culture, particularly classical dance or ballet, but also court dances in the Renaissance. Thoinot Arbeau published in 1589, the most complete treatise of the dances practiced in the sixteenth century, the Orchestragraphy, a pedagogical manual of dance and drum method.

In the seventeenth century, the development of classical dance began with the first court ballets organized by Balthazar de Beaujoyeulx commissioned by Catherine de Medici, for example, the Ballet of the Poles and the Ballet Comique de la Reine. Dance then conquered the court of Louis XIV who founded the Royal Academy of Dance in 1661.

Heir to this institution, the Paris Opera Ballet Company, the oldest in the world, is considered one of the best. Pierre Beauchamp codified the five classical positions and developed a system of dance notation, thus promoting the development of baroque dance that was integrated into the performances of lyrical tragedies, opera-ballets by Lully and Rameau, and comedies-ballets by Pierre Corneille and Molière.

In the eighteenth century, Jean-Georges Noverre continued this codification with his Lettres sur la danse, a founding text for the new action ballet (or ballet-pantomime). At that time, women, cluttered by baskets, corsets, wigs and high heels, played only a secondary role. The very first action ballet in the repertoire is Gluck’s Don Juan, written according to Noverre’s indications. This major work is the direct ancestor of the great romantic ballets of the nineteenth century. Auguste Vestris developed a method that inspired Marius Petipa or Auguste Bournonville.

With the contributions of François Delsarte and Émile Jaques-Dalcroze, great figures such as Isadora Duncan, Loïe Fuller and Rudolf Laban defined principles of modern dance that, during the twentieth century, were developed by Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, Pina Bausch and Alwin Nikolais and the National Centre for Contemporary Dance.

The practice of dance in France is regulated by the French Dance Federation, divided into show dances (ballet, cancan, contemporary dance…), society (traditional, quadrille…) and competition (sports, acrobatic).

Music

Scholarly music

Divided in the Middle Ages between two different paths, polyphonic art (ars antiqua, ars nova) anchored on Gregorian chant and the art of monodic secular chant of troubadours and trouvères, French music knows a certain influence in Europe. The Baroque period is also very important in France of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with composers such as Lully, Charpentier, Rameau, Couperin. Romanticism and the modern period also saw great composers such as Berlioz, Chopin, Gounod and Bizet in the nineteenth century, or Ravel, Fauré, Debussy in the twentieth century. The contemporary period can be represented by Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Henry, Henri Dutilleux and more recently by Pierre Boulez, Iannis Xenakis, Jean-Claude Risset, François Bayle, Philippe Hersant and Betsy Jolas.

• Beatrice of Die, twelfth century.
• Guillaume de Machaut, xivth century.
• Jean-Baptiste Lully, Baroque period.
• Hector Berlioz, romantic era.
• Claude Debussy, late nineteenth century – early twentieth century.
• Maurice Ravel, late nineteenth century – early twentieth century.

Popular song and varieties

French song before the twentieth century was often represented by village singers or cabaret singers who enjoyed some success until the early twentieth century, such as Mistinguett. The development of music in France really began during the interwar period, notably with Jean Sablon, Charles Trénet, Édith Piaf and Mireille, allowing the music hall to develop, with artists such as Josephine Baker and Maurice Chevalier.

Record companies are created, and the song then takes a real place in French society and culture: while in the 1930s record sales were tiny (less than 3 million records per year), the market explodes in the 1960s (25 million records sold per year), reaching 150 million records sold per year in the late 1970s. The so-called “popular” music took off, mixing genres specific to France, such as French songs, with imported genres, such as rock, pop or rap.

In the early 2000s, the French variety is still present, while rap continues its rise. However, the record crisis is beginning to be felt: record sales are collapsing year after year, from 165 million in 2002 to only 30 million in 2018, due in particular to illegal downloading and the arrival of streaming.

Among the best-known French singers and those who have sold the most records, we can note:

• Tino Rossi, whose song Petit papa Noël remains the best-selling title in France.
• Édith Piaf, the best-known French singer abroad, notably thanks to her song La Vie en Rose.
• Georges Brassens, singer-songwriter of more than two hundred songs including Les Copains d’abord. He received the Grand Prix de Poésie de l’Académie Française in 1967.
• Charles Aznavour, an internationally renowned French-Armenian singer-songwriter.
• Serge Gainsbourg, a singer-songwriter who has often played with the French language and marked the public by his multiple provocations.
• Dalida, a singer with a tragic destiny who has embraced several musical styles, such as twist, rai and disco.
• Johnny Hallyday, singer and rocker who became a true icon. It remains the largest seller of French records.
• Claude François, whose song Comme d’habitude became an international standard under the title My Way.
• Michel Sardou, a popular and committed singer, became the second biggest seller of records in France.
• Jean-Jacques Goldman, a singer-songwriter who has scored many hits for himself and for other artists.
• Mylène Farmer, a singer-songwriter who revolutionizes French songs through her clips and spectacular concerts.
• MC Solaar, pioneer of French rap.

Notable personalities of French song:

• Tino Rossi.
• Edith Piaf.
• Georges Brassens.
• Charles Aznavour.
• Serge Gainsbourg.
• Dalida.
• Johnny Hallyday.
• Claude François.
• Michel Sardou.
• Jean-Jacques Goldman.
• Mylène Farmer.
• MC Solaar.

Cinema

Cinema, invented in 1895 in Lyon by the Lumière brothers, remains an important activity in France, despite competition in Hollywood, and around the world. In 2005, France was the world’s sixth-largest producer and Europe’s leading producer of feature films. This vitality is supported by France’s policy of cultural exception, which is manifested, for example, by the imposition of quotas for French films broadcast on television. She speaks at prestigious events such as the César, the Prix Lumières, and the International Film Festival, held annually in Cannes, which is the most publicized cultural event in the world.

Existing for a hundred years, French cinema is very rich in the diversity of its directors (Georges Méliès, Jean-Luc Godard, Luc Besson…) its actors (Jean Marais, Louis de Funès, Gérard Depardieu, Audrey Tautou, Jean Dujardin, Marion Cotillard, …) and the films it has produced (Les Misérables, La Grande Vadrouille, Emmanuelle, Le Grand Bleu, Untouchables…). However, since the 1980s, a large part of the production is more specifically focused on comedies (Le Dîner de cons, Les Visiteurs, Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis…) and auteur films (La Haine, Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain, The Artist…).

Notable personalities of French cinema:

• The Lumière brothers.
• Georges Méliès.
• Louis de Funès.
• Jean-Luc Godard.
• Catherine Deneuve.
• Gérard Depardieu.
• Isabelle Adjani.
• Isabelle Huppert.
• Audrey Tautou.
• Marion Cotillard.
• Jean Dujardin.
• Jean-Paul Belmondo
• Alain Delon
• Yves Montand
• Lino Ventura
• François Truffaut

During the health crisis in France, the State made a recovery plan of 2 billion euros to support the cultural sectors. On 28 August 2020, Prime Minister Jean Castex announced that €165 million would be used to support the cinematographic creation of the €2 billion planned. In addition, €432 million has already been allocated to help the performing arts sector.

Fashion

Fashion has been an important industry in France since the seventeenth century, and it is still today a major vector of French culture abroad. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Paris claims to be the fashion capital of the world, (as well as London, Milan and New York) and hosts the headquarters of leading fashion houses.

It was during the reign of Louis XIV, when the luxury goods industries were brought under the control of the king, that France acquired a prominent place in fashion. The French royal court then gradually established itself as the arbiter of taste and style in Europe, in the eighteenth century. In the years 1860-1960, the great fashion houses breathed new life. The expression “haute couture” originated in Paris and dates from the 1860s. It is a name protected by law, which guarantees certain quality standards and exclusivity.

In the 1960s, haute couture, considered too elitist, was criticized by youth culture. In 1966, the couturier Yves Saint Laurent broke with the standards established by the launch of a ready-to-wear, inaugurating the expansion of French fashion in mass manufacturing. Sonia Rykiel, Thierry Mugler, Claude Montana, Jean-Paul Gaultier and Christian Lacroix set new trends, with a focus on marketing and manufacturing in the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1990s, conglomerates were formed bringing together many French fashion houses, including luxury giants LVMH, Kering and L’Oréal. In the early 2020s, the French perfumery sector, industrialized at the very beginning of the twentieth century by François Coty, is a world leader.

Gastronomy in France

French cuisine enjoys a great reputation, especially thanks to its quality agricultural productions: many wines (champagne, wines from Bordeaux, Burgundy or Alsace, etc.) and cheeses (Roquefort, Camembert, etc.), and thanks to the high gastronomy it has been practicing since the eighteenth century.

French cuisine is extremely varied. It is essentially made up of regional specialties, such as Alsatian sauerkraut, Quiche Lorraine, rillettes du Mans, beef bourguignon, Foie gras périgourdin, cassoulet languedocien, tapenade provençale or quenelles lyonnaises. We can draw real culinary boundaries, between a north using butter and shallots and a south preferring oil and garlic, and between regions with earthly cuisine (Périgord for example) and others with cuisine resolutely turned towards the sea (Provence). Nevertheless, these differences tend to fade today, due to the junction of lifestyles and the discussed rise of junk food as well as a fashion of globalized cuisine.

In addition to its strong wine tradition, France is also an important beer producer. The three main French brewing regions are Alsace (60% of national production), Nord-Pas-de-Calais and Lorraine.

The gastronomic meal of the French was inscribed in 2010 on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. It usually consists of a starter, a garnished dish and a dessert (sometimes supplemented with cheese, served before). In the evening, the starter is often replaced by a soup or soup (hence the name “supper” for this meal). The Sunday meal is more elaborate: two starters (one cold, one hot), roast beef or poultry (most commonly), salad, cheese platter and dessert. Meal times range from noon (North and East), to 1 p.m. (average), 1:30 p.m. in the South; in the evening, from 6.30 p.m. (Flanders) to 7.30 p.m. (average) and 8.30 p.m. (South).

Philosophy and science

Since the Middle Ages, France has been a major center of knowledge and discovery. The University of Paris, created in 1200, has been from its origin and until the contemporary era one of the most important in the West.

In the seventeenth century, René Descartes defined a method for the acquisition of scientific knowledge, while Blaise Pascal remained famous for his work on probability and fluid mechanics. The eighteenth century was marked by the work of the biologist Buffon and the chemist Lavoisier, who discovered the role of oxygen in combustion, while Diderot and D’Alembert published the Encyclopedia. In the nineteenth century, Augustin Fresnel was the founder of modern optics, Sadi Carnot laid the foundations of thermodynamics, and Louis Pasteur was a pioneer of microbiology.

We can mention the mathematician and physicist Henri Poincaré, the physicists Henri Becquerel, Pierre and Marie Curie (herself of Polish origin), who remained famous for their work on radioactivity, the physicist Paul Langevin or the virologist Luc Montagnier, co-discoverer of the AIDS virus in the twentieth century.

In 2018, with 62 Nobel Prizes won, France is the 4th most awarded country, behind Germany (83 prizes), the United Kingdom (113 prizes) and the United States (376 prizes). In the field of mathematics, French mathematicians have won 4 Abel Prizes and 12 Fields Medals, making France the 2nd most awarded nation for these two awards.

The international influence of France

Since the Middle Ages, France has played a major role in the artistic, cultural, intellectual and political history of the world. In particular, many of its former colonies still use its language, its law, its political institutions or its tax system. Since the mid-twentieth century, cultural policy has been a major aspect of France’s foreign policy.

The global cultural influence of France includes French, the language of the European elite and diplomacy until the early twentieth century. France is the second French-speaking country in the world, after the Democratic Republic of Congo, but first in number of speakers. French, spoken by some 220 million speakers worldwide, is one of the two working languages of the United Nations and its agencies, one of the three main working languages of the European Commission and the African Union. France is a founding member of the International Organization of La Francophonie, which brought together 75 countries in 2011 and promotes the French language, as well as democratic values and human rights.

The cultural presence of France abroad is maintained not only by its diplomatic representations, but also by the extensive network of the French Alliance and by the more than 400 French schools abroad. In addition, France is at the origin of the creation of media with an international vocation, such as radio RFI or the television channels TV5 Monde (common to several countries) and France 24.

Country codes

France has the following codes:

• LF, according to the list of ICAO airport code prefixes;
• F, according to the List of International Number Plate Codes;
• F, for aircraft registration;
• F, according to the list of ITU prefixes
• FR, according to ISO 3166-1 (list of country codes), alpha-2 code;
• FRA, according to ISO 3166-1 (list of country codes), alpha-3 code;
• FRA, according to the IOC list of country codes;
• .fr, according to the list of Internet TLDs (Top Level Domain);
• FR, according to the list of country codes used by NATO, alpha-2 code;
• FRA, according to the list of country codes used by NATO, alpha-3 code.

References and sources

« Comparateur de territoire − France entière », on insee.fr, 2015; « Country comparison : population », on cia.gov; « L’altitude du Mont Blanc reste stable », on Le Figaro, 2009; Bulletin du Centre d’études et de recherche scientifiques, volume 11; « Climat : la France est-elle vraiment un petit pollueur à l’échelle mondiale ?», Le Monde,‎ 2022 « L’école maternelle », on education.gouv.fr; « Un réseau étendu », on rff.fr, 2009. Clive Lamming, Larousse des trains et du chemin de fer , Paris, Larousse, p. 72-81; Article, Wikipedia.