BASIC
INFORMATION
Full
Name: FRANCE
Capital
Paris
Largest city Paris
Official language
French
Government
Unitary republic
Area 674,843 km²
Population
63,587,700
Currency Euro
Time
zone (UTC +1)
Internet
TLD .fr
Calling
code +33
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GEOGRAPHY
& BACKGROUND
France,
officially the French Republic (French:
République française, is a
country whose metropolitan territory is
located in Western Europe and that also
comprises a collection of overseas islands
and territories located in other continents.[1]
Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean
Sea to the English Channel and North Sea,
and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean.
French people often refer to Metropolitan
France as L'Hexagone (The "Hexagon")
because of the geometric shape of its territory.
France
is bordered by Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany,
Switzerland, Italy, Monaco, Andorra, and
Spain. In some of its overseas departments,
France also shares land borders with Brazil,
Suriname, and the Netherlands Antilles.
France is also linked to the United Kingdom
via the Channel Tunnel, which passes underneath
the English Channel (La Manche in French).
The
French Republic is a democracy which is
organised as a unitary semi-presidential
republic. It is a developed country with
the seventh-largest economy in the world.[2]
Its main ideals are expressed in the Declaration
of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.
France is one of the founding members of
the European Union, and has the largest
land area of all members. France is also
a founding member of the United Nations,
and a member of La Francophonie, the G8,
and the Latin Union. It is one of the five
permanent members of the United Nations
Security Council wielding veto power, and
it is also one of eight acknowledged nuclear
powers. With almost 75 million foreign tourists
each year, France is the most popular international
tourist destination in the world above Spain
(52 million) and USA (41 million). The name
France originates from the Franks, a Germanic
tribe that occupied the region after the
fall of the Western Roman Empire. More precisely,
the region around Paris, called Île-de-France,
was the original French royal demesne.
While
the main territory of France (metropolitan
France; French: la Métropole, France
métropolitaine or informally l'hexagone)
is located in Western Europe, France is
also constituted from a number of territories
in North America, the Caribbean, South America,
the southern Indian Ocean, the Pacific Ocean,
and Antarctica (sovereignty claims in Antarctica
are governed by the Antarctic Treaty System).
These territories have varying forms of
government ranging from overseas département
to "overseas country".
Metropolitan
France possesses a wide variety of landscapes,
from coastal plains in the north and west
to mountain ranges in the south-east (the
Alps) and the south-west (the Pyrenees).
The highest point in western Europe is situated
in the French Alps: Mont Blanc at 4,810
metres (15,781 ft) above sea-level. There
are several other elevated regions such
as the Massif Central, the Jura, the Vosges,
and the Ardennes which are quite rocky and
forested. France also has extensive river
systems such as the Loire, the Rhône,
the Garonne and the Seine.
At
211,195 square miles (547,030 km²),
France is the world's 48th-largest country
(after Kenya). It is comparable in size
to Yemen, and is somewhat smaller than the
US state of Texas.
Due
to its overseas departments and territories
scattered on all oceans of the planet, France
possesses the second-largest Exclusive Economic
Zone (EEZ) in the world, covering 11,035,000
square kilometres (4,260,000 sq mi), just
behind the EEZ of the United States (11,351,000
km² / 4,383,000 sq mi), but ahead of
the EEZ of Australia (8,232,000 km²
/ 3,178,000 sq mi).[3] The EEZ of France
covers approximately 8% of the total surface
of all the EEZs of the world, whereas the
land area of the French Republic is only
0.45% of the total land area on Earth.
For
more information please visit
http://www.fco.gov.uk/
