French Republic

The French Republic commonly known as France is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans.[15] Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channeland the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean. It is often referred to as lHexagone ("The Hexagon") because of the geometric shape of its territory. It is the largest western European country and it possesses the second-largest exclusive economic zone in the world, covering 11,035,000 km2 (4,260,000 sq mi), just behind that of the United States (11,351,000 km2 / 4,383,000 sq mi).Over the past 500 years,[16] France has been a major power with strong cultural, economic, military and political influence in Europe and around the world. During the 17th and 18th centuries, France colonised great parts of North America and Southeast Asia; during the 19th and early 20th centuries, France built the second largest colonial empire of the time, including large portions of North, West and Central Africa, Southeast Asia, and many Caribbean and Pacific Islands.France has its main ideals expressed in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. The French Republic is defined as indivisible, secular, democratic and social by its constitution.[17] France is one of the world's most developed countries,[18] it possesses the world's fifth largest economy measured by GDP, the ninth-largest economy measured by purchasing power parity and is Europe's second largest economy by nominal GDP.[19]France is the wealthiest European (and the world's 4th) nation[20] in aggregate household wealth. France enjoys a high standard of living as well as a high public education level, and has also one of the world's highest life expectancies.[21] France has been listed as the world's "best overall health care" provider by the World Health Organization.[22] It is the most visited country in the world, receiving 82 million foreign tourists annually. France has the world's third largest nominal military budget,[24] the third largest military in NATO and EU's largest army. France also possesses the third largest nuclear weapons stockpile in the world[25] with around 300 active warheads as of 25 May 2010 and the world's second largest diplomatic corps (second only to that of the United States).[26] France is a founding member of the United Nations, one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, and a member of theFrancophonie, the G8, G20, NATO, OECD, WTO, and the Latin Union. It is also a founding and leading member state of the European Union and the largest one by area.[27] In 2011, France was listed 20th on the Human Development Index and 24th on the Corruption Perceptions Index (2010). The French Republic is a unitary semi-presidential republic with strong democratic traditions. The constitution of the Fifth Republic was approved byreferendum on 28 September 1958.[100] It greatly strengthened the authority of the executive in relation to parliament. The executive branch itself has two leaders: the President of the Republic, currently Nicolas Sarkozy, who is head of state and is elected directly by universal adult suffrage for a 5-year term (formerly 7 years), [101] and the Government, led by the president-appointed Prime Minister, currently Franois Fillon. The French parliament is a bicameral legislature comprising a National Assembly (Assemble Nationale) and a Senate.[102]The National Assembly deputies represent local constituencies and are directly elected for 5-year terms.[103] The Assembly has the power to dismiss the cabinet, and thus the majority in the Assembly determines the choice of government. Senators are chosen by an electoral college for 6-year terms (originally 9-year terms), and one half of the seats are submitted to election every 3 years starting in September 2008.[104] The Senate's legislative powers are limited; in the event of disagreement between the two chambers, the National Assembly has the final say.[105] The government has a strong influence in shaping the agenda of Parliament. French politics are characterised by two politically opposed groupings: one left-wing, centred around the French Socialist Party, and the other right-wing, centred previously around the Rassemblement pour la Rpublique (RPR) and now its successor the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP).[106] The executive branch is currently composed mostly of the UMP.

Law
France uses a civil legal system;[70] that is, law arises primarily from written statutes; judges are not to make law, but merely to interpret it (though the amount of judicial interpretation in certain areas makes it equivalent to case law). Basic principles of the rule of law were laid in the Napoleonic Code (which was, in turn, largely based on the royal law codified under Louis XIV). In agreement with the principles of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen law should only prohibit actions detrimental to society. As Guy Canivet, first president of the Court of Cassation, wrote about the management of prisons: :Freedom is the rule, and its restriction is the exception; any restriction of Freedom must be provided for by Law and must follow the principles of necessity and proportionality. That is, Law should lay out prohibitions only if they are needed, and if the inconveniences caused by this restriction do not exceed the inconveniences that the prohibition is supposed to remedy. French law is divided into two principal areas: private law and public law. Private law includes, in particular, civil law and criminal law. Public law includes, in particular,administrative law and constitutional law. However, in practical terms, French law comprises three principal areas of law: civil law, criminal law and administrative law. France does not recognize religious law, nor does it recognize religious beliefs or morality as a motivation for the enactment of prohibitions. As a consequence, France has long had neither blasphemy laws nor sodomy laws (the latter being abolished in 1791). However, "offenses against public decency" (contraires aux bonnes murs) or disturbing public order (trouble l'ordre public) have been used to repress public expressions of homosexuality or street prostitution. Criminal laws can only address the future and not the past (criminal ex post facto laws are prohibited) ; and to be applicable, laws must be officially published in theJournal Officiel de la Rpublique Franaise. France is tolerant of the LGBT community. Since 1999, civil unions for homosexual couples are permitted, although same-sex marriage is illegal in France. Laws sentencing racism, sexism or antisemitism are old and important, for instance, laws prohibiting discriminatory speech in the press are as old as 1881.[107] In 2010, France passed a law banning face veils in public, including those worn by Muslim women. Amnesty International has condemned the law as a violation offreedom of expression. [108] In September two Muslim women were fined for wearing the niqab (an Islamic face-covering veil), though they appealed the fines.[109]

Foreign relations
France is a member of the United Nations and serves as one of the permanent members of the UN Security Council with veto rights.[110] It is also a member of the G8, World Trade Organization (WTO),[111] the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC)[112] and the Indian Ocean Commission (COI).[113] It is an associate member of the Association of Caribbean States (ACS) [114] and a leading member of the International Francophone Organisation (OIF) of fifty-one fully or partly French-speaking countries.[115] It hosts the headquarters of the OECD,[116] UNESCO, [117] Interpol,[118] Alliance Base[119] and the International Bureau for Weights and Measures.[120] In 1953, France received a request from the United Nations to pick a coat of arms that would represent it internationally. Thus the French emblem was adopted and is currently used on passports.[121] French foreign policy has been largely shaped by membership of the European Union, of which it was a founding member. In the 1960s, France sought to exclude the British from the organisation, [122] seeking to build its own standing in continental Europe. Since the 1960s, France has developed close ties with reunified Germany to become the most influential driving force of the EU.[123] Since 1904, France has maintained an "Entente cordiale" with the United Kingdom, and over the last few years, links between both countries have strenghthened- especially on a military level.

Economy
A member of the G8 group of leading industrialised countries, it is ranked as the world's fifth largest and Europe's second largest economy by nominal GDP;[153] with 39 of the 500 biggest companies of the world in 2010, France ranks world's 4th and Europe's 1st in the Fortune Global 500 ahead of Germany and the UK. France joined 11 other EU members to launch the euro on 1 January 1999, with euro coins and banknotes completely replacing the French franc() in early 2002.[154] France has a mixed economy which combines extensive private enterprise (nearly 2.5 million companies registered)[156][157] with substantial (though declining[158]) state enterprise and government intervention (seedirigisme). The government retains considerable influence over key segments of infrastructure sectors, with majority ownership of railway, electricity, aircraft, nuclear power and telecommunications.[158] It has been gradually relaxing its control over these sectors since the early 1990s.[158] The government is slowly corporatising the state sector and selling off holdings in France Tlcom, Air France, as well as the insurance, banking, and defence industries.[158] France has an important aerospace industry led by the European consortium Airbus, and has its own national spaceport, the Centre Spatial Guyanais. According to the World Trade Organization (WTO), in 2009 France was the world's sixth-largest exporter and the fourth-largest importer of manufactured goods.[159] In 2008, France was the third-largest recipient of foreign direct investment among OECD countries at $117.9 billion, ranking behind Luxembourg (where foreign direct investment was essentially monetary transfers to banks located in that country) and the United States ($316.1 billion), but above the United Kingdom ($96.9 billion), Germany ($24.9 billion), or Japan ($24.4 billion).[160][161] In the same year, French companies invested $220 billion outside of France, ranking France as the second most important outward direct investor in the OECD, behind the United States ($311.8 billion), and ahead of the United Kingdom ($111.4 billion), Japan ($128 billion) and Germany ($156.5 billion).[160][161] With 39 of the 500 biggest companies of the world in 2010, France ranks 4th in the Fortune Global 500, behind the USA, Japan and China, but ahead of Germany and the UK

Culture
France has been a center of cultural creation for centuries. Many French artists have been among the most renowned of their time, and France is still recognized in the world for its rich cultural tradition. The successive political regimes have always promoted artistic creation, and the creation of the Ministry of Culture in 1959 helped preserve the cultural heritage of the country and make it available to the public. The Ministry of Culture has been very active since its creation, granting subsidies to artists, promoting French culture in the world, supporting festivals and cultural events, protecting historical monuments. The French government also succeeded in maintaining a cultural exception to defend audiovisual products made in the country. France receives the highest number of tourists per year, largely thanks to the numerous cultural establishments and historical buildings implanted all over the territory. It counts 1,200 museums welcoming more than 50 million people annually.[268] The most important cultural sites are run by the government, for instance through the public agency Centre des monuments nationaux, which have around a hundred national historical monuments at charge. The 43,180 buildings protected as historical monuments include mainly residences (many castles, or chteaux in French) and religious buildings (cathedrals,basilicas, churches, etc.), but also statutes, memorials and gardens. The UNESCO inscribed 37 sites in France on the World Heritage List.[269]