FACTS ABOUT FRANCE
From Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong

SOCIETY

France is the most visited country in the world, receiving 75 million visitors per year (not counting airport correspondence). The US receives 51 million visitors per year.

France has 1700 fast food restaurants, half of them McDonald’s, but 97,000 cafés and restaurants and 33,000 bakeries.

Each day, dogs leave 10 tons of excrement on Paris’ streets: 600 people break limbs each year by slipping on it.

4.5 million French people, or 8% of the population, speaks one of eight ancient languages: Occitan, Alsatian, Breton, Creole, Corsican, Basque, Catalan, and Flemish.

France is home to 5 million Muslims, the biggest Muslim population in any European country. Islam is the second religion of France.

France is also home to 700,000 Jews, the second largest Jewish population in the Diaspora.

HEALTH

100% of the French population is covered by free healthcare. In the US, 50 million people have no coverage at all.

The World Health Organization ranked France number one in the world for the efficiency of its health service. The US ranked 37th, although Americans spend over 13% of their GDP on health, compared to 9% in France.

The French live on average 1 year longer than Americans do, and their child mortality rate is only 4.8 per 1000 compared to 7.8 in the US.

ECONOMY

France is the world 4th biggest economic power, next to the US, Japan and Germany, and before Britain.

France is least unionized country of all OECD countries, and the French lose proportionately half as many work days due to strikes as Americans do.

France is one the most productive of all OECD countries in output per hour worked.

BUSINESS

Next to WalMart, the world’s second biggest retailer is the French multinational Carrefour, with 5,500 stores in 30 countries with annual business of 80 million dollars.

French Airbus sells 300 civilian airplanes a year, or as many as Boeing.

France has the only commercially viable space launcher program in the world, Ariane.

France’s Minitel is the world’s only profitable system of business-to-consumer e-commerce, with total business of two billion dollars.

POLITICAL ORGANIZATION

The French did not have free right of association until 1901.

France has 36 800 towns, more than Spain, Italy, Germany, Belgium and the UK combined.

Towns of more than 10 000 in France are not allowed to have their own police.

A quarter of the French work force is employed by the State or government-owned concerns.

France’s overseas territories make it a neighbor of the US, Canada, Brazil, Australia, and Madagascar.

HISTORY

During World War II, the French lost 210 000 soldiers and 150 000 civilians in the six weeks of the battle of France in 1940, compared to a total death count of 290 000 for the United States and 240 000 for Britain.

During World War II, the French economy collapsed by as much as 80%.

A quarter of France 300 000 Jews died during the Holocaust. French Jews had the highest proportion of survival of Jews in all occupied countries.

Until 1789, half of the population of France did not speak French. In 1900, a third still spoke a dialect such as Breton, Occitan or Provençal as their first language.

From 1789 to 1958, France went through four democratic regimes, three monarchies, two empires and a fascist regime, all overturned by war, revolution, or coup d’état.