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 /ˈpærɪs/ in English, [paʁi] in French) is the capital of France and the country's most populous city. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region (also known as the "Paris Region"; French: Région parisienne). The city of Paris, within its administrative limits
48°51.4′N 2°21.05′E / 48.8567°N 2.35083°E |
| Official languages An official language is a language that is given a special legal status in a particular country, state, or other territory. 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 as a first language (mother tongue), by 190 million as a second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired foreign language, with significant numbers of speakers in 57 countries. Most native speakers of the language live in France, where the language |
| 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 body within a community, political entity or organization which has the authority to make and enforce rules, laws, and regulations.[citation needed] |
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 A republic is a form of government in which the head of state is not a monarch and the people have an impact on its government. The word 'republic' is derived from the Latin phrase res publica, which can be translated as "a public affair" |
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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, Nicolas Sarkozy, was elected President of France in 2007. The UMP is a member of the European People's Party (EPP), the Centrist) |
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Prime Minister The Prime Minister of France in the Fifth Republic is the functional head of the government and Council of Ministers of France. The head of state in France 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 |
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, Nicolas Sarkozy, was elected President of France in 2007. The UMP is a member of the European People's Party (EPP), the Centrist) |
| 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 An upper house is one of two chambers of a bicameral legislature, the other chamber being the lower house |
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 has been divided into a series of historical articles navigable through the list to the right. The chronological and governmental regimes in France. The history of other cultural topics such as French art and literature can be found on their own pages. For information on the modern country, see the France article. For other |
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French State |
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 |
1958 (5th Republic The Fifth Republic is the fifth and current republican constitution of France, which was introduced on 5 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 Regime 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 Economic Community. With over 500 million citizens, the EU 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 Area is a quantity expressing the two-dimensional size of a defined part of a surface, typically a region bounded by a closed curve. The term surface area refers to the total area of the exposed surface of a 3-dimensional solid, such as the sum of the areas of the exposed sides of a polyhedron. Area is an important invariant in the differential |
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Total[1] |
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[2] |
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 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)
213,010 sq mi |
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- Cadastre A cadastre , using a cadastral survey or cadastral map, is a comprehensive register of the metes-and-bounds real property of a country. A cadastre commonly includes details of the ownership, the tenure, the precise location (some include GPS coordinates), the dimensions (and area), the cultivations if rural, and the value of individual parcels of[3] |
543,965 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 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)
210,026 sq mi |
| Population In biology, a population is the collection of inter-breeding organisms of a particular species; in sociology, a collection of human beings. Individuals within a population share a factor may be reduced by statistical means, but such a generalization may be too vague to imply anything |
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(January 1, 2009 estimate) |
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Total[1] |
65,073,482[5] (19th This is a list of sovereign states and other territories by population, with population figures estimated for 1 July 2005 . The figures are estimates for the year 2005 from the U.N. World Population Prospects (2004 revision) using the medium fertility variant) |
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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 |
62,448,977[4] (22nd This is a list of sovereign states and other territories by population, with population figures estimated for 1 July 2005 . The figures are estimates for the year 2005 from the U.N. World Population Prospects (2004 revision) using the medium fertility variant) |
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Density Population density is a measurement of population per unit area or unit volume. It is frequently applied to living organisms, and particularly to humans. It is a key geographic term[6] |
115/km2 (89th This is a list of countries and dependencies ranked by human population density, and measured by the number of human inhabitants per square kilometre or square mile. The list includes sovereign states and self-governing dependent territories based upon the ISO standard ISO 3166-1. The list also includes but does not rank unrecognized but de facto)
297/sq mi |
| GDP The gross domestic product or gross domestic income (GDI) is a basic measure of a country's overall economic output. It is the market value of all final goods and services made within the borders of a country in a year. It is often positively correlated with the standard of living, though its use as a stand-in for measuring the standard of living (PPP The purchasing power parity theory uses the long-term equilibrium exchange rate of two currencies to equalize their purchasing power. Developed by Gustav Cassel in 1918, it is based on the law of one price: the theory states that, in ideally efficient markets, identical goods should have only one price) |
2008 estimate |
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Total |
$2.130 trillion[7] (8th There are three lists of countries of the world sorted by their gross domestic product (the value of all final goods and services produced within a nation in a given year). The GDP dollar estimates given on this page are derived from purchasing power parity (PPP) calculations) |
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Per capita It is also used in wills to indicate that each of the named beneficiaries should receive, by devise or bequest, equal shares of the estate. This is in contrast to a per stirpes division, in which each branch of the inheriting family inherits an equal share of the estate. It is usually a sum divided by an amount of people |
$34,205[7] (23rd) |
| GDP (nominal) |
2009 estimate |
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Total |
$2.867 trillion[7] (5th) |
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Per capita |
$46,037[7] (16th) |
| Gini (2002) |
26.7 |
| HDI (2007) |
▲ 0.961[8] (very high) (8th) |
| Currency |
Euro,[9] CFP Franc[10]
(EUR, XPF) |
| Time zone |
CET[6] (UTC+1) |
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Summer (DST) |
CEST[6] (UTC+2) |
| Drives on the |
right |
| Internet TLD |
.fr[11] |
| Calling code |
331 |
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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 |
France (pronounced /ˈfræns/ ( listen) or /ˈfrɑːns/; 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.[12] 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 a developed country and possesses the fifth largest economy by nominal GDP[13] and eighth largest economy by purchasing power parity.[14] It is the most visited country in the world, receiving 82 million foreign tourists annually.[15] France is one of the founding members of the European Union, and has the largest land area of all members. 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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