Territory of the French Republic in the world
(excl. Antarctica where sovereignty is suspended)
| Capital A capital is the area of a country, province, region, or state, regarded as enjoying primary status; although there are exceptions, a capital is almost always a city which physically encompasses the offices and meeting places of the seat of government and fixed by law. Alternate terms include capital city and political capital; the latter phrase
(and largest city) This is a list of communes in France with a population over 20,000 at the 2006 census. All figures reflect INSEE's sans doubles comptes counting method |
Paris Paris (pronounced /ˈparɪs/ in English, [paʁi] in French) is the capital and primate city of France. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region (or Paris Region, French: Région parisienne). The city of Paris, within its administrative limits largely unchanged since 1860, has an estimated
48°51.4′N 2°21.05′E / 48.8567°N 2.35083°E |
| Official language(s) An official language is a language that is given a special legal status in a particular country, state, or other jurisdiction. Typically a nation's official language will be the one used in that nation's courts, parliament and administration. However, official status can also be used to give a language a legal status, even if that language is not |
French French is a Romance language globally spoken by about 110 million people who speak French (native and first language speakers combined). Around 190 million people speak French as a second language, and an additional 200 million speak it as as an acquired foreign language.[citation needed] French speaking communities are present in 57 countries and |
| Recognised regional languages A regional language is a language spoken in an area of a nation state, whether it be a small area, a federal state or province, or some wider area |
Alsatian Alsatian (Alsatian and Alemannic German: Elsässerditsch ; French: Alsacien; German: Elsässisch or Elsässerdeutsch) is a Low Alemannic German dialect spoken in most of Alsace, a region in eastern France which has passed between French and German control many times; Basque Basque is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is spoken by 25.7% of Basques in all territories (665,800 out of 2,589,600. Of these, 614,000 live in the Spanish part of the Basque country and the remaining 51,800 live in the French; Breton The Breton language is a Celtic language spoken in Brittany (Breizh/Bretagne), France; New Caledonian languages The thirty New Caledonian languages form a branch of the Southern Oceanic languages. Their speakers are known as Kanaks2; Catalan Catalan is a Romance language, the national and official language of Andorra, and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencià (Valencian), as well as in the city of Alghero on the Italian island of Sardinia. It is also spoken in the; Corsican Corsican or Corsu is a continuum of Romance languages spoken and written on the islands of Corsica (France) and northern Sardinia (Italy), alongside French and Italian, which are the official languages. Corsu is the traditional native language of the Corsican people, and was long the sole language of the island, which was acquired by France in 1768; Creole A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable language that originated from a mixture of various languages. The vocabulary of a creole language consists of cognates from the parent languages, though there are often clear phonetic and semantic shifts. On the other hand, the grammar often has original features but may differ substantially from2; Flemish West Flemish is a group of Dutch dialects spoken in parts of the Netherlands, Belgium, and France; Franco-Provençal Franco-Provençal or Arpitan or Romand (in Switzerland) (Vernacular: francoprovençâl, arpitan, patouès; Italian: francoprovenzale, arpitano, dialetto, patoà; French: francoprovençal, arpitan, patois) is a Romance language with several distinct dialects that form a linguistic sub-group separate from Langue d'Oïl and Langue d'Oc. The name; Lorrain language Lorrain is a language spoken by a minority of people in Lorraine in France and in Gaume in Belgium. It is one of the Langues d'oïl. It is classified as a regional language of France, and has the recognised status of a regional language of Wallonia . It has been influenced by Lorraine Franconian and Luxembourgish, Germanic languages spoken in; Shimaore dialect (Mayotte)2; Occitan Occitan , known also as Lenga d'òc in Occitan or Langue d'oc in French (native name: occitan [utsiˈta], lenga d'òc [ˈleŋɡɔˈðɔ(k)]; native nickname: la lenga nòstra i.e. "our [own] language") is a Romance language spoken in Occitania, that is, Southern France, the Occitan Valleys of Italy, Monaco and in the Aran Valley of Spain; Oïl languages The langues d'oïl are a group of languages or dialects including standard French and its closest autochthonous relatives, which are spoken in the northern half of France, southern Belgium, and the Channel Islands. They belong to the larger Gallo-Romance group of languages, which also covers most of southern France (Occitania), northern Italy and; Tahitian Tahitian, a Tahitic language, spoken by Tahitians, is one of the two official languages of French Polynesia[citation needed] . It is an Eastern Polynesian language closely related to Rarotongan, New Zealand Māori, and Hawaiian2[1]
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| Demonym A demonym, also referred to as a gentilic, is a name for a resident of a locality and is derived from the name of the particular locality. The word demonym comes from the Greek word for "populace" with the suffix for "name" (-nym). In English, the demonym is often the same as the name of the people's native language: the people |
French To be French, according to the first article of the Constitution, is to be a citizen of France, regardless of one's origin, race, or religion According to its principles, France has devoted herself the destiny of a proposition nation, a generic territory where people are bounded only by the French language and the assumed willingness to live |
| Government A government is the organization, machinery, or agency through which a political unit exercises its authority, controls and administers public policy, and directs and controls the actions of its members or subjects |
Unitary A unitary state is a sovereign state governed as one single unit in which the central government is supreme and any administrative divisions exercise only powers that the central government chooses to delegate. Many states in the world have a unitary system of government semi-presidential The semi-presidential system, also known as the presidential-parliamentary system, or premier-presidential system, is a system of government in which a president and a prime minister are both active participants in the day-to-day administration of the state. It differs from a parliamentary republic in that it has a popularly elected head of state republic Both modern and ancient republics vary widely in their ideology and composition. The most common definition of a republic is a state without a monarch. In republics such as the United States and France the executive is legitimated both by a constitution and by popular suffrage. In the United States, Founding Fathers like James Madison defined |
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President The President of the French Republic colloquially referred to in English as the President of France, is France's elected Head of State |
Nicolas Sarkozy Nicolas Sarkozy (pronounced [nikɔla saʁkɔzi] ), born Nicolas Paul Stéphane Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa on January 28, 1955, is the 23rd and current President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra. He assumed the office on 16 May 2007 after defeating Socialist Party candidate Ségolène Royal 10 days earlier (UMP The Union for a Popular Movement is a centre-right political party in France. Founded in 2002, the party currently enjoys an absolute majority in the National Assembly and a plurality in the Senate. Its candidate (and then president), Nicolas Sarkozy, was elected President of France in 2007. The UMP is a member of the European People's Party (EPP),) |
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Prime Minister The Prime Minister of France in the Fifth Republic is the head of government and of the Council of Ministers of France. The head of state is the President of the French Republic. During the Second, Third and Fourth Republics, the Head of Government was called President of the Council of Ministers (Président du Conseil des Ministres), generally |
François Fillon François Fillon is the current Prime Minister of France, having been appointed to that office by President Nicolas Sarkozy on 17 May 2007 (UMP The Union for a Popular Movement is a centre-right political party in France. Founded in 2002, the party currently enjoys an absolute majority in the National Assembly and a plurality in the Senate. Its candidate (and then president), Nicolas Sarkozy, was elected President of France in 2007. The UMP is a member of the European People's Party (EPP),) |
| Legislature A legislature is a type of deliberative assembly with the power to pass, amend and repeal laws. The law created by a legislature is called legislation or statutory law. Legislatures are known by many names, the most common being parliament and congress, although these terms also have more specific meanings. In parliamentary systems of government, |
Parliament The French Parliament or Parliament of France is the deliberative and legislative branch (parliament) of the Government of France. The current parliamentary system in France is bicameral, and the Parliament is composed of: |
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Upper House In parliamentary systems the upper house is frequently seen as an advisory or "revising" chamber, for this reason its powers of direct action are often reduced in some way. Some or all of the following restrictions are often placed on upper houses: |
Senate The Senate is the upper house of the Parliament of France, presided over by a president |
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Lower House A lower house is one of two chambers of a bicameral legislature, the other chamber being the upper house |
National Assembly The French National Assembly is the lower house of the bicameral Parliament of France under the Fifth Republic. The other is the Senate (“Sénat”) |
| Formation The history of France goes back to the arrival of the earliest human being in what is now France. Members of the genus Homo entered the area hundreds of thousands of years ago, while the first modern homo sapiens, the Cro-Magnons, arrived around 40,000 years ago. A number of important archaeological sites have been discovered in the country, |
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French State |
10 August 843 (Treaty of Verdun In the Treaty of Verdun was a treaty of the three surviving sons of Louis the Pious, the son and successor of Charlemagne, which divided the territories of the Carolingian Empire to three kingdoms) |
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Current constitution The current Constitution of France was adopted on October 4, 1958. It is typically called the Constitution of the Fifth Republic, and replaced that of the Fourth Republic dating from 1946. Charles de Gaulle was the main driving force in introducing the new constitution and inaugurating the Fifth Republic, while the text was drafted by Michel Debré |
5 October 1958 (5th Republic The Fifth Republic is the fifth and current republican constitution of France, which was introduced on 4 October 1958. The Fifth Republic emerged from the collapse of the French Fourth Republic, replacing a parliamentary government with a semi-presidential system. It is France's third longest enduring regime, after the Ancien Régime and the Third) |
| EU The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 member states, located primarily in Europe. Committed to regional integration, the EU was established by the Treaty of Maastricht on 1 November 1993 upon the foundations of the European Communities. With over 500 million citizens, the EU combined generates an estimated 30% share (US$ 18.4 accession A Member State of the European Union is any one of the 27 sovereign states that have acceded to the European Union since its de facto inception in 1951 as the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). From an original membership of six states, there have been six successive enlargements, the largest occurring on 1 May 2004, when ten states joined |
25 March 1957 |
| Area This is a list of the sovereign states and dependent territories of the world, sorted by total area, including all entities on the ISO standard ISO 3166-1 |
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Total[2] |
674,843 km2 To help compare orders of magnitude of different geographical regions we list here surface areas between 100,000 km2 and 1,000,000 km2. See also areas of other orders of magnitude (43rd This is a list of the sovereign states and dependent territories of the world, sorted by total area, including all entities on the ISO standard ISO 3166-1)
260,558 sq mi The square mile is an imperial and US unit of measure for an area equal to the area of a square of one statute mile. It should not be confused with miles square, which refers to the number of miles on each side squared. For instance, 20 miles square (20 × 20 miles) is equal to 400 square miles |
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Metropolitan France Metropolitan France is the part of France located in Europe, including Corsica. It can also be described as mainland France or as the French mainland and the island of Corsica. By contrast, Overseas France (la France d'outre-mer, or l'Outre-mer, or colloquially les DOM-TOM) is the collective name for the French overseas departments (départements |
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- IGN The Institut Géographique National or IGN is a French public state administrative establishment founded in 1940 to produce and maintain geographical information for France and its overseas departments and territories[3] |
551,695 km2 To help compare orders of magnitude of different geographical regions we list here surface areas between 100,000 km2 and 1,000,000 km2. See also areas of other orders of magnitude (47th)
213,010 sq mi |
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- Cadastre[4] |
543,965 km2 (47th)
210,026 sq mi |
| Population |
| |
(January 1, 2010 estimate) |
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Total[2] |
65,447,374[6] (20th) |
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Metropolitan France |
62,793,432[5] (22nd) |
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Density[7] |
115/km2 (89th)
299/sq mi |
| GDP (PPP) |
2009 estimate |
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Total |
$2.112 trillion[8] (7th) |
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Per capita |
$33,744[8] (23rd) |
| GDP (nominal) |
2009 estimate |
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Total |
$2.635 trillion[8] (5th) |
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Per capita |
$42,091[8] (16th) |
| Gini (2002) |
26.7 |
| HDI (2007) |
▲ 0.961[9] (very high) (8th) |
| Currency |
Euro,[10] CFP Franc[11]
(EUR, XPF) |
| Time zone |
CET[7] (UTC+1) |
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Summer (DST) |
CEST[7] (UTC+2) |
| Drives on the |
right |
| Internet TLD |
.fr[12] |
| Calling code |
331 |
| 1 |
The overseas regions and collectivities form part of the French telephone numbering plan, but have their own country calling codes: Guadeloupe +590; Martinique +596; French Guiana +594, Réunion and Mayotte +262; Saint Pierre et Miquelon +508. The overseas territories are not part of the French telephone numbering plan; their country calling codes are: New Caledonia +687, French Polynesia +689; Wallis and Futuna +681 |
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Spoken mainly in oversea territories |
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France (pronounced /ˈfræns/ ( listen) franss or /ˈfrɑːns/ frahns; French pronunciation (help·info): [fʁɑ̃s]), officially the French Republic (French: République française, pronounced: [ʁepyblik fʁɑ̃sɛz]), is a member state of the European Union located in its western region, with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents.[13] France is a unitary semi-presidential republic with its main ideals expressed in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.
Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean. It is often referred to as L’Hexagone ("The Hexagon") because of the geometric shape of its territory. It is bordered (clockwise from the north) by Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Monaco, Spain and Andorra. France's overseas departments and collectivities also share land borders with Brazil and Suriname (bordering French Guiana), and the Netherlands Antilles (bordering Saint-Martin). France is linked to the United Kingdom by the Channel Tunnel, which passes underneath the English Channel.
France is the largest state in the European Union by area and the third largest in Europe behind Russia and Ukraine. It would be second if its extra-European territories like French Guiana were included. France has been a major power for many centuries with strong economic, cultural, military and political influence. During the 17th and 18th centuries, France colonised great parts of North America; during the 19th and early 20th centuries, France built the second largest empire of the time, including large portions of North, West and Central Africa, Southeast Asia, and many Pacific islands.
France is one of the most developed countries[14] and possesses the fifth largest economy by nominal GDP[15] and seventh largest economy by purchasing power parity.[16] France enjoys a high standard of living, although its quality of life index rating ranks it 25th in the world behind that of Greece, Belgium and Portugal.[17] The country has a high public education level,[18] it's one of the most globalised nations,[19] has 2009's second best international reputation[20] and has also one of the world's highest life expectancy.[21] It is the most visited country in the world, receiving 82 million foreign tourists annually.[22] France is one of the founding members of the European Union. It is also a founding member of the United Nations, and a member of the Francophonie, the G8, G20, NATO, OECD, WTO and the Latin Union. It is one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, possesses the third largest number of nuclear weapons in the world and the largest number of nuclear power plants in the European Union.
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