France (in French, France), officially French Republic (République française), is a sovereign country, member of the European Union, constituted as a social and democratic State of law and whose form of government is the semi-presidential republic. Its territory, which includes overseas regions, extends over a total area of 643 801 km².1 In 2015 the country had 66.3 million inhabitants, 64.2 in metropolitan France and 2.1 in the territories of ultramarine.5
The territory of France, and its metropolitan or continental part, 6 is located in Western Europe, where it borders, to the south, the Mediterranean Sea, Monaco (4.4 km) and Italy (488 km); to the southwest, with Spain (623 km), Andorra (56.6 km) and the Cantabrian Sea; to the west, with the Atlantic Ocean; to the north, with the Channel of the Channel, United Kingdom (22.6 m., in the middle of the submarine tunnel that unites them), the North Sea and Belgium (620 km), and to the east, with Luxembourg (73 km) , Germany (451 km) and Switzerland (573 km). Its European insular territory includes the island of Corsica, in the western Mediterranean, and several coastal archipelagos in the Atlantic Ocean. In America, French Guiana is French territory, bordering Brazil (673 km) 7 and Suriname (510 km), and the islands and archipelagos of Martinique, Guadeloupe, Saint Barthélemy, Saint Martin and Saint Pierre and Miquelon. In the Indian Ocean it has the islands of Mayotte and Réunion, as well as the archipelagos of French Polynesia, Wallis and Futuna and New Caledonia in the Pacific Ocean. The uninhabited territories of France are the Clipperton Island atoll, in the eastern Pacific, and the so-called French Southern and Antarctic Lands.
France is the fifth world economy with a very high cultural diffusion in the international context. It is a member of the G8, the euro zone and the Schengen area, and hosts many of the most important multinational companies, leaders in various segments of the industry and the primary sector, as well as being the first tourist destination in the world, with 83 million of foreign visitors per year (7% of GDP) .8 France, where the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of 1789 was drafted, is a founding member of the United Nations Organization and one of the five permanent members of Its Security Council.9 France hosts the headquarters of the Council of Europe and the European Parliament, both in Strasbourg, and those of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and Unesco, in Paris. It is also one of the eight recognized nuclear powers10 and a member of NATO.
During the nineteenth century, the country was a colonial power, and for a long time the French language was the main language of diplomacy. Even today, it is one of the languages with the greatest projection, and French culture and civilization form the link between the countries of the Francophonie. In addition, the country was a member of the dissolved Latin Union
