Straddling western Europe from the English Channel to the Mediterranean, France was Europe's first modern republic, and possessed a colonial empire second only to that of the UK. Today, it is one of the world's major industrial powers and its fourth-largest exporter. Industry is the leading economic sector, but the agricultural lobby remains powerful – French farmers will mount the barricades in defense of their interests. France's focus is very much on Europe. Together with Germany it was a founder member of the European Economic Community (EEC), and has supported successive steps to build a more closely integrated European Union. Paris, the French capital, is generally considered one of the world's most beautiful cities. It has been home to some of the most influential artists, writers, and film-makers of the modern era.

There is a strong national identity, and compulsory use of French has traditionally been promoted as a unifying force. The cultural traditions of Bretons, Flemings, Alsatians, Basques, Occitans, Catalans, and Corsicans are now respected, but the Constitutional Court has struck down legislation on the use of regional language in government.

France encouraged immigration until the early 1970s, but laws have since become more restrictive. The 1999 census recorded 3.26 million resident foreigners (5.6% of the population) and a similar number of foreign-born immigrants have been naturalized. Racist National Front (FN) propaganda has periodically whipped up anti-immigrant feeling, but there is also a strong current of youth solidarity among "black, blanc, beur" ("black, white, Arab"), boosted spectacularly in 1998 by the World Cup success of the multiracial national soccer team.

The Roman Catholic Church is still dominant, but there are sizable Protestant, Jewish, and Muslim minorities. Abortion and birth control were both legalized in the 1970s, despite strong Catholic opposition, and couples now commonly live together before marriage. Some two million unmarried couples of two or more years' standing, including gay couples, gained legal status with social and tax rights under 1998 legislation recognizing the civil solidarity pact.

Women did not get the vote until 1944. Although there was a woman prime minister, Edith Cresson, in 1991–1992, and women took five senior cabinet posts in the incoming Socialist-led government in 1997, the proportion of women in parliament was the second lowest in the EU until the introduction of a "parity" law in 2000, requiring an equal number of male and female candidates on party electoral lists.

Strengths

Engineering, reflected in the TGV and nuclear industries. Specializations such as cars (Citroën, Peugeot, and Renault) and telecommunications (Alcatel). Defense sector a major exporter, as are pharmaceutical and chemical industries. Success in attracting inward investment. Strong technocratic traditions: unlike in USA or UK, top graduates are attracted into engineering. Luxury goods, cosmetics, perfumes, and quality wines. Most agriculture well modernized; France is Europe's leading agricultural producer.

Weaknesses

High taxes, social charges, and labor costs. France is losing its positions in traditional industries such as iron and steel, metallurgy, and textiles. Some major high-tech industries, such as telecommunications, run partly to further national pride, rather than on a strictly commercial basis.

Profile

At first slow to industrialize, protectionist France started competing in world markets and modernizing its industry in the 1950s and 1960s. Integration in western Europe, starting with the coal and steel industry in the 1950s, placed France at the heart of the EU. It was one of the 12 EU countries fully to adopt the euro in 2002. One of the world's top exporters, its foreign trade balance runs a healthy surplus. France has a long tradition of state involvement in running the economy. Nationalization of key industries began in the late 1930s, with a fresh burst in 1981–1983, but since then both right-of-center and socialist governments have pursued privatization with vigor, reaching into the defense industry, aviation, banking, telecommunications, and insurance. Regional hubs are of growing economic significance. France is the EU's largest agricultural producer, and its farmers are a powerful political lobby. Active trade unions succeeded in getting a maximum 35-hour week introduced in 2000.

France is a multiparty democracy. The constitution of the Fifth Republic, framed by Gen. Charles de Gaulle in 1958, ensures that the president has strong executive powers, but rules in tandem with a government and prime minister chosen by the Assemblée Nationale. Under changes agreed in 2000, the president and parliament are no longer elected according to separate timetables; the 2002 elections chose both for five-year terms. Traditionally presidents attend to foreign policy and defense issues, while the government focuses on domestic and economic policy.

Profile

Apart from the two-term presidency of François Mitterrand of the PS (1981–1995), French presidents of the Fifth Republic have all been right-of-center. From 1986 onward, however, both Mitterrand and his successor Jacques Chirac had to coexist for much of the time with a government and parliament dominated by political opponents. Thus Chirac, a conservative Gaullist, appointed Lionel Jospin of the PS as prime minister in 1997, heading a government coalition with the Communists, Greens, and Radical Socialists. In 2002, however, after Chirac won reelection as president in May, the sweeping victory of his UMP in legislative elections the following month marked a decisive rejection of so-called "cohabitation."

The far left has declined since 1945, when the PCF had 25% of the vote. The Greens suffered a serious setback in 2002, winning just three Assembly seats. The racist National Front (FN) failed to win any seats, but had created a major shock in the first round of the presidential poll when its leader Jean-Marie Le Pen finished second. Although the "democratic" parties united to ensure that he was trounced by Chirac in the run-off, his score of almost 18% was still a high-water mark for the FN.

Main Political Issues

Liberal economic reform

The center-right program which brought electoral success in 2002 was built around promises of immediate income tax cuts and pro-business measures.

Racism and "exclusion"

Exploiting concerns about crime, urban violence, and unemployment, the racist right has several times turned such fears to its political advantage by blaming immigrants. Legislation on immigration has been tightened and the new government in June 2002 promised tough new measures on maintaining order. Inner-city deprivation and "exclusion" of the unemployed and homeless, although widely recognized as divisive, were issues on which the PS-led government of 1997&ndash2002 failed to find effective policies.

European integration and globalization

Opposition to European integration has grown since the early 1990s, fueled by fears of losing French sovereignty, while opponents of "globalization" tap into similar concerns that French jobs and culture are under threat. Now part of the euro single currency, the French have been encouraged to look for benefits in terms of stability and economic growth, but many still see giving up the franc as losing a symbolic part of their national identity. The most strident opponent of EU integration is the FN, but the center-right has also promised a stout defense of French interests, notably over agricultural reform.

French foreign policy has followed two, apparently contradictory, strands since World War II – maintenance of a strongly independent line and furtherance of French interests within a united Europe. France's leading role within the EU is seen as a way of combining the two strands. Along with Germany, France has led the way in calling for greater European integration and fully supports the EU's eastward expansion.

Relations with the UK have been troubled from time-to-time notably over French health-related restrictions on the entry of UK farm products, and because illegal immigrants passing through France persistently use the Channel Tunnel to enter the UK.

France seeks to offset US dominance in both foreign affairs and culture. It left NATO's military command in 1966 and maintained an independent nuclear deterrent (which it insisted on testing in the Pacific in 1995–1996 despite a wave of international criticism). Although France has latterly not supported the USA and the UK in a hard-line attitude to Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, it has backed other recent US-led military campaigns, including the "war on terrorism." It also seeks to maintain its influence over its former empire and francophone regions in general.

France was a founder member of NATO, but left its miltary command in 1966 in opposition to US domination. It maintained an independent nuclear deterrent through the Cold War, but had a rapprochement with NATO in the 1990s. Joint participation with Germany in European army units is partly symbolic of reconciliation, as well as an expression of the need for an EU defense structure.

The influence of the army, once very strong, is now much diminished. Compulsory military service ended in 2001.

France has one of the world's largest and most export-oriented defense industries, producing its own tanks, jet fighter aircraft, and missiles.

France is the world's most committed user of nuclear energy, which provides over three-quarters of its electricity requirements. The policy reflects a desire for national energy self-sufficiency. Coal, once plentiful in the north and Lorraine, is now mostly exhausted, as are the gas fields off the southwest coast.

Awareness of "green" issues has risen with a series of campaigns against major infrastructure projects. Nuclear power's importance, however, puts the environmentalist lobby in perspective. Transportation of oil by sea poses the threat of pollution of the Atlantic coast. Brittany's beaches and fisheries were severely affected by the wreck of the Erika in December 1999. Severe storms devastated woodlands in 2000, focusing attention on the dangers of global warming.

France led the world in high-speed train technology in 1983 with the TGV (train à grande vitesse) from Paris to Lyon. TGV lines have since been extended, and also link up with Belgium, Italy, Spain, the Mediterranean, and the Channel Tunnel; a Paris–Strasbourg line is planned for 2005. On the expanding network of autoroutes motorists pay tolls for the convenience of rapid journeys. Traffic through Paris's two airports is set to double to 140 million by 2020, but plans for a third airport at Chaulnes, 130 km (80 miles) to the north, have become a political football.

The French consume more medicines per capita than any other nation, and a significant number take medically approved, and prescribed, cures at health spas. French health care was rated the most efficient in the world by WHO in 2000. Under the national health system patients pay for treatment, and then get the majority of the cost reimbursed by an insurance company paid by the social services. Although health awareness has risen in recent years, a 1992 law banning smoking in public places is widely ignored and alcoholism remains a problem, with cirrhosis of the liver not uncommon as a cause of death.

Education is highly centralized, a situation which is slowly generating a desire for greater flexibility. The education ministry organizes the curriculum, sets examinations, including the baccalauréat, and decides staffing issues. Roman Catholic schools, which take most of the 17% of privately educated children (but are not fee paying and receive large state subsidies), are the exception. However, they are still obliged to follow the national curriculum.

The focus in the classroom remains the acquisition of a broad range of knowledge. Pupils' academic records are impressive, despite frequent staff strikes.

France has more than 70 universities – 13 in Paris – and higher education bodies with 1.2 million students. Entry is not competitive, but based on passing the secondary-level exam, the baccalauréat. Most students attend the university nearest to home. The universities have not been given the funds or staff to cope with the huge increase in student numbers in recent years. The 150 Grandes Écoles, the most influential tertiary institutions, are outside the university system, and each takes just a few hundred carefully selected students. They groom the future governing elite, opening the way for their successful graduates to gain the top civil service and professional jobs.

The Code Napoléon, enacted by Napoléon I in 1804, still forms the basis of French law. Criminal justice is based on inquisitorial rather than adversarial principles. The juge d'instruction has considerable powers to examine witnesses and assess evidence. The press are not restricted by sub judice rules in reporting trials and can speak freely of suspects. Political corruption cases, reaching the higher echelons of government, attract much attention.

Public concern about rising petty crime and violence has encouraged successive governments to promote tough policing. An "antiterrorism" bill was introduced in October 2001, giving police extra powers.

Wealth and income disparities in France are higher than in most OECD states. The Socialists narrowed the gap a little in the 1980s with the introduction of the legal minimum wage (le SMIC). Most tax is indirect – a result of a long French tradition of income-tax evasion. Major tax cuts announced in 2000 aimed to redress the imbalance of income tax on the rich and poor. The wealthy take exotic vacations to the Himalayas, the Andes, and Polynesia. The French lag behind their European neighbors in using the Internet; fewer than one-fifth of the population had done so by 2001.

France is the world's leading tourist destination, with over 76 million visitors a year. It tops the list for tourists from many of its neighboring countries, including Germans, British, Italians, and Dutch. Most French people also prefer to take vacations in their own country, although many do visit Spain and Italy.

Paris is the most visited city in Europe. Its attractions include the Eiffel Tower, Nôtre Dame cathedral, Eurodisney, the Pompidou Center, and the Louvre, the world's most popular art museum.

The Côte d'Azur in the southeast became a by-word for fashionable tourism when royalty and other notables flocked to resorts such as Nice at the end of the 19th century. Today Cannes hosts the world's leading film festival, and has a growing business convention trade. Other destinations throughout the country attract tourists for a variety of reasons such as wine production, historic and archaeological sites, and good beaches. There are resorts for skiing and hiking in the Alps and Pyrenees, and sailing off the varied coastline is also popular.

The French Revolution of 1789–1794 overthrew a monarchy that had lasted for more than 1300 years. It ushered in a period of alternating republicanism, Napoleonic imperialism, and monarchism. In 1870 the founding of the Third Republic established France firmly in the republican tradition.

• 1914–1918 1.4 million Frenchmen killed in World War I.
• 1918–1939 Economic recession and political instability; 20 prime ministers and 44 governments.
• 1940 Capitulation to Germany. Puppet Vichy regime. Gen. de Gaulle leads "Free French" abroad.
• 1944 Liberation of France.
• 1946–1958 Fourth Republic. Political instability: 26 governments. Nationalizations. France takes leading role in EEC formation.
• 1958 Fifth Republic. De Gaulle becomes president with strong executive powers.
• 1960 Most French colonies gain independence.
• 1962 Algerian independence after bitter war with France.
• 1966 France withdraws from NATO military command.
• 1968 General strike and riots over education policy and low wages. National Assembly dissolved; Gaullist victory in June elections.
• 1969 De Gaulle resigns after defeat in referendum on regional reform; replaced by Georges Pompidou.
• 1974 Valéry Giscard d'Estaing president. Center-right coalition.
• 1981 Left wins elections; François Mitterrand president.
• 1983–1986 Government U-turn on economic policy.
• 1986 Cohabitation between socialist president and new right-wing government led by Jacques Chirac. Privatization program introduced.
• 1988 Mitterrand wins second term. PS-led coalition returns.
• 1991 Edith Cresson becomes first woman prime minister.
• 1993 Center-right wins elections. Second period of cohabitation.
• 1995 Jacques Chirac president.
• 1995–1996 Controversial series of Pacific nuclear tests.
• 1996 Unpopular austerity measures to prepare economy for European monetary union.
• 1997 Center-right loses elections. PS-led government takes office in reversed cohabitation.
• 2000 35-hour week becomes law.
• 2002 January, euro fully adopted. April–June, center-right victory in both presidential and legislative elections. July, Chirac unharmed in assassination attempt.