France

France, officially the French Republic, is a country primarily located in Western Europe. Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the North Atlantic, the French West Indies, and many islands in Oceania and the Indian Ocean. Metropolitan France shares borders with Belgium and Luxembourg to the north, Germany to the northeast, Switzerland to the east, Italy and Monaco to the southeast, Andorra and Spain to the south, and a maritime border with the United Kingdom to the northwest. Its metropolitan area extends from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea. Its 18 integral regions—five of which are overseas—span a combined area of 632,702 km2 (244,288 sq mi), with a total population estimated at over 69.1 million in 2026. Its capital, largest city and main cultural and economic centre is Paris.

Metropolitan France was settled during the Iron Age by Celtic tribes known as Gauls before Rome annexed the area in 51 BC, leading to a distinct Gallo-Roman culture. In the Early Middle Ages, the Franks formed the kingdom of Francia, which became the heartland of the Carolingian Empire. The Treaty of Verdun of 843 partitioned the empire, with West Francia evolving into the Kingdom of France. In the High Middle Ages, France was a powerful but decentralised feudal kingdom, but from the mid-14th to the mid-15th centuries, France was plunged into a dynastic conflict with England known as the Hundred Years' War. In the 16th century, French culture flourished during the French Renaissance, and a French colonial empire emerged. Internally, France was dominated by the conflict with the House of Habsburg and the French Wars of Religion between Catholics and Huguenots. France was successful in the Thirty Years' War and further increased its influence during the reign of Louis XIV.

The French Revolution of 1789 overthrew the Ancien Régime and produced the Declaration of the Rights of Man, which expresses the nation's ideals to this day. France reached its political and military zenith in the early 19th century under Napoleon Bonaparte, subjugating much of continental Europe and establishing the First French Empire. Its collapse initiated a period of relative decline during which France endured the Bourbon Restoration until the founding of the French Second Republic, which was succeeded by the Second French Empire upon Napoleon III's takeover. His empire collapsed during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. This led to the establishment of the French Third Republic, as well as a period of economic prosperity and cultural and scientific flourishing known as the Belle Époque. France was one of the major participants of World War I, from which it emerged victorious at great human and economic cost. It was among the Allies of World War II, but it surrendered and was occupied by Germany in 1940. Following its liberation in 1944, the short-lived Fourth Republic was established and later dissolved over the course of the Algerian War. The current Fifth Republic, a semi-presidential system, was formed in 1958 by Charles de Gaulle. Algeria and most French colonies became independent in the 1960s, with the majority retaining close economic and military ties with France.

France retains its centuries-long status as a global centre of art, science, cuisine and philosophy. It hosts the fourth-largest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites, with 54 in total, and is the world's leading tourist destination, having received 102 million foreign visitors in 2025. A developed country, France has a high nominal per capita income globally, and its economy ranks among the largest in the world by both nominal GDP and PPP-adjusted GDP. It is a great power, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and an official nuclear-weapon state. The country is part of multiple international organisations and forums.

Etymology

Originally applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name France comes from the Latin Francia, or 'realm of the Franks'. The name of the Franks is related to the English word frank ('free'): the latter stems from the Old French franc ('free, noble, sincere') and ultimately from the Medieval Latin word francus ('free, exempt from service; a freeman, a Frank'), a generalisation of the tribal name that emerged as a Late Latin borrowing of the reconstructed Frankish endonym *Frank. It has been suggested that the meaning 'free' was adopted because after the conquest of Gaul, only Franks were free of taxation or, more generally, because they had the status of freemen in contrast to servants or slaves. The etymology of *Frank is uncertain. It is traditionally derived from the Proto-Germanic word *frankōn, which translates to 'javelin' or 'lance' (the throwing axe of the Franks was known as the francisca), although these weapons may have been named because of their use by the Franks, not the other way around.

In English, 'France' is pronounced FRANSS in American English and FRAHNSS or FRANSS in British English. The pronunciation with is mostly confined to accents with the trap–bath split, such as Received Pronunciation, though it can be also heard in some other dialects, such as Cardiff English.

History

Prehistory

The oldest traces of archaic humans in what is now France date from approximately 1.8 million years ago. Neanderthals occupied the region into the Upper Paleolithic era but were slowly replaced by Homo sapiens around 35,000 BC. This period witnessed the emergence of cave painting in the Dordogne and Pyrenees, including at Lascaux, dated to c. 18,000 BC. At the end of the Last Glacial Period (10,000 BC), the climate became milder. From approximately 7,000 BC, this part of Western Europe entered the Neolithic era, and its inhabitants became sedentary.

After demographic and agricultural development between the 4th and 3rd millennia BC, metallurgy appeared, initially working gold, copper and bronze, then later iron. France has numerous megalithic sites from the Neolithic, including the Carnac stones site (approximately 3,300 BC).

Antiquity (6th century BC – 5th century AD)

In 600 BC, Ionian Greeks from Phocaea founded the colony of Massalia (present-day Marseille). Celtic tribes penetrated parts of eastern and northern France, spreading through the rest of the country between the 5th and 3rd century BC. Around 390 BC, the Gallic chieftain Brennus and his troops made their way to Roman Italy, defeated the Romans in the Battle of the Allia, and besieged and ransomed Rome. This left Rome weakened, and the Gauls continued to harass the region until 345 BC, when they entered into a peace treaty. However, the Romans and the Gauls remained adversaries for centuries.

Around 125 BC, the south of Gaul was conquered by the Romans, who called this region Provincia Nostra ("Our Province"), which evolved into Provence in French. Julius Caesar conquered the remainder of Gaul and overcame a revolt by Gallic chieftain Vercingetorix in 52 BC. Gaul was divided by Augustus into provinces, and many cities were founded during the Gallo-Roman period, including Lugdunum (present-day Lyon), the capital of the Gauls. In 250–290 AD, Roman Gaul suffered a crisis with its fortified borders attacked by barbarians. The situation improved in the first half of the 4th century, a period of revival and prosperity. In 312, Emperor Constantine I converted to Christianity. The Christian demographic, who had been persecuted, increased. However, the onset of the 5th century marked the resumption of major tribal migrations. Teutonic tribes invaded the region, the Visigoths settling in the southwest, the Burgundians along the Rhine Valley, and the Franks in the north.

Early Middle Ages (5th–10th century)

In late antiquity, Gaul was divided into Germanic kingdoms and a remaining Gallo-Roman territory. Celtic Britons, fleeing the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, settled in west Armorica; the Armorican peninsula was renamed Brittany, and Celtic culture was revived.

The first leader to unite all Franks was Clovis I, who began his reign as king of the Salian Franks in 481, routing the last forces of the Roman governors in 486. Clovis said he would be baptised a Christian in the event of victory against the Visigothic Kingdom, which was said to have guaranteed the battle. Clovis regained the southwest from the Visigoths and was baptised in 508. Clovis was the first Germanic conqueror after the Fall of the Western Roman Empire to convert to Catholic Christianity; thus, France was given the title "Eldest daughter of the Church" by the papacy, and French kings were called "the Most Christian Kings of France".

The Franks embraced the Christian Gallo-Roman culture, and Gaul was renamed Francia ("Land of the Franks"). The Germanic Franks adopted Romanic languages. Clovis made Paris his capital and established the Merovingian dynasty, but his kingdom would not survive his death. The Franks treated land as a private possession and divided it among their heirs, so four kingdoms emerged from that of Clovis: Paris, Orléans, Soissons, and Rheims. The last Merovingian kings lost power to their mayors of the palace (head of household). One mayor of the palace, Charles Martel, defeated an Umayyad invasion at the Battle of Tours in 732. His son, Pepin the Short, seized the crown of Francia from the weakened Merovingians and founded the Carolingian dynasty. Pepin's son Charlemagne reunited the Frankish kingdoms and built an empire across Western and Central Europe.

Proclaimed Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Leo III and thus establishing the French government's longtime historical association with the Catholic Church, Charlemagne tried to revive the Western Roman Empire and its cultural grandeur. Charlemagne's son Louis I kept the empire united, althogugh it was divided between Louis' three sons into East Francia, Middle Francia and West Francia in 843. West Francia approximated the area occupied by modern France and was its precursor.

Throughout the 9th and 10th centuries, incessant Viking raids severely weakened the Carolingian monarchy, accelerating the fragmentation of West Francia into a decentralised, feudal society. As central authority faltered, local nobility secured hereditary rights to their titles and lands, creating a system where the king's authority became more religious and symbolic than secular, frequently challenged by powerful territorial princes. After the Battle of Hastings in 1066, William the Conqueror added "King of England" to his titles, becoming vassal and the equal of the king of France, creating recurring tensions.

High and Late Middle Ages (10th–15th century)

The Carolingian dynasty ruled France until 987, when Hugh Capet was crowned king of the Franks. His descendants unified the country through wars and inheritance. From 1190, the Capetian rulers began to be referred as "kings of France" rather than "kings of the Franks". Later kings expanded their directly possessed domaine royal to cover over half of modern France by the 15th century. Royal authority became more assertive, centred on a hierarchically conceived society distinguishing nobility, clergy, and commoners.

The nobility played a prominent role in Crusades to restore Christian access to the Holy Land. French knights made up most reinforcements in the 200 years of the Crusades, in such a fashion that the Arabs referred to crusaders as Franj. French Crusaders imported French into the Levant, making Old French the base of the lingua franca ("Frankish language") of the Crusader states. The Albigensian Crusade was launched in 1209 to eliminate the heretical Cathars in the southwest of modern-day France.

From the 11th century, the House of Plantagenet, rulers of the County of Anjou, established its dominion over the surrounding provinces of Maine and Touraine, then built an "empire" from England to the Pyrenees, covering half of modern France. Tensions between France and the Plantagenet empire would last a hundred years, until Philip II of France conquered most of its continental possessions between 1202 and 1214 and defeated the Angevin coalition at the Battle of Bouvines, leaving only England and Aquitaine to the Plantagenets. Following this victory, France became the most prosperous and powerful kingdom in Europe.

Charles IV the Fair died without an heir in 1328. The crown passed to Philip of Valois rather than Edward Plantagenet, who had become Edward III of England the previous year. During the reign of Philip, the monarchy reached the height of its medieval power. Edward contested Philip's throne in 1337, beginning the intermittent Hundred Years' War between England and France. Boundaries changed, but landholdings inside France by English kings remained extensive for decades. With charismatic leaders such as Joan of Arc, French counterattacks won back most English continental territories. France was struck by the Black Death, from which half of the 17 million population died.

Early modern period (15th century–1789)

The French Renaissance saw cultural development and standardisation of French, which became the official language of France and Europe's aristocracy. France became rivals of the House of Habsburg during the Italian Wars, which would dictate much of their later foreign policy until the mid-18th century. French explorers claimed lands in the Americas, paving expansion of the French colonial empire. The rise of Protestantism led France to a civil war known as the French Wars of Religion. This forced Huguenots to flee to Protestant regions such as the British Isles and Switzerland. The wars were ended by Henri IV's Edict of Nantes, which granted some freedom of religion to the Huguenots. Spanish troops assisted the Catholics from 1589 to 1594 and invaded France in 1597. Spain and France returned to all-out war between 1635 and 1659. The Franco-Spanish War cost France 300,000 casualties; total deaths on both sides were 200,000.

Under Louis XIII, Cardinal Richelieu promoted centralisation of the state and reinforced royal power. He destroyed castles of defiant lords and denounced the use of private armies. By the end of the 1620s, Richelieu established "the royal monopoly of force". France fought in the Thirty Years' War, supporting the Protestant side against the Habsburgs. From the 16th to the 19th century, France was responsible for about 10% of the transatlantic slave trade.

During Louis XIV's minority, trouble known as The Fronde occurred. This rebellion was driven by feudal lords and sovereign courts as a reaction to the royal absolute power. The monarchy reached its peak during the 17th century and reign of Louis XIV, during which France further increased its influence. By turning lords into courtiers at the Palace of Versailles, his command of the military went unchallenged. By the mid-17th century, France had emerged as the dominant power in Europe. Under the reign of Louis XIV, it built Europe's strongest army, fought a series of wars, and experienced remarkable artistic and scientific flourishing. It also became the most populous European country and had tremendous influence over European politics, economy, and culture. French became the most-used language in diplomacy, science, and literature until the 20th century. France took control of territories in the Americas, Africa and Asia. In 1685, Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, forcing thousands of Huguenots into exile and published the Code Noir providing the legal framework for slavery and expelling Jews from French colonies.

Under the wars of Louis XV, France lost New France and most Indian possessions after its defeat in the Seven Years' War (1756–1763). Its European territory kept growing, however, with acquisitions such as Lorraine and Corsica. Louis XV's weak rule, including the decadence of his court, discredited the monarchy, which in part paved the way for the French Revolution.

Louis XVI supported America with money, fleets and armies, helping them win independence from Great Britain. France gained revenge but verged on bankruptcy—a factor that contributed to the Revolution. Some of the Enlightenment occurred in French intellectual circles, and scientific breakthroughs, such as the naming of oxygen and the first hot air balloon carrying passengers, were achieved by French scientists. French explorers took part in the voyages of scientific exploration through maritime expeditions. Enlightenment philosophy, in which reason is advocated as the primary source of legitimacy, undermined the power of and support for the monarchy and was a factor in the Revolution.

Revolutionary France (1789–1799)

The French Revolution was a period of political and societal change that began with the Estates General of 1789, and ended with the coup of 18 Brumaire in 1799, leading to the formation of the French Consulate. Many of its ideas are fundamental principles of liberal democracy, while its values and institutions remain central to modern political discourse.

Its causes were a combination of social, political and economic factors, which the Ancien Régime proved unable to manage. A financial crisis and social distress led in May 1789 to the convocation of the Estates General, which was converted into a National Assembly in June. The Storming of the Bastille on 14 July led to a series of radical measures by the Assembly, among them the abolition of feudalism, state control over the Catholic Church in France, and a declaration of rights.

The next three years were dominated by a struggle for political control, exacerbated by economic depression. Military defeats following the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars in April 1792 resulted in the insurrection of 10 August 1792. The monarchy was abolished and replaced by the French First Republic in September, while Louis XVI was executed in January 1793.

After another revolt in June 1793, the constitution was suspended and power passed from the National Convention to the Committee of Public Safety. About 16,000 people were executed in a Reign of Terror, which ended in July 1794. Weakened by external threats and internal opposition, the Republic was replaced in 1795 by the Directory. In 1799, the Consulate seized power in a coup led by Napoleon.

Napoleonic France (1799–1815)

Napoleon became First Consul in 1799 and later Emperor of the French Empire. Changing sets of European coalitions declared wars on Napoleon's empire. His armies conquered most of continental Europe with swift victories such as the Austerlitz and battles of Jena-Auerstadt. Members of the Bonaparte family were appointed monarchs in some of the newly established kingdoms.

These victories led to the worldwide expansion of French revolutionary ideals and reforms, such as the metric system, Napoleonic Code and Declaration of the Rights of Man. In 1812 Napoleon attacked Russia, reaching Moscow. Thereafter his army disintegrated through supply problems, disease, Russian attacks, and finally winter. After this catastrophic campaign and the ensuing uprising of European monarchies against his rule, Napoleon was defeated. About a million Frenchmen died during the Napoleonic Wars, including 306,000 killed. After his brief return from exile, Napoleon was finally defeated in 1815 at the Battle of Waterloo, and the Bourbon monarchy was restored with new constitutional limitations.

Colonial empire

The discredited Bourbon dynasty was overthrown by the July Revolution of 1830, which established the constitutional July Monarchy; French troops began the conquest of Algeria. Unrest led to the French Revolution of 1848 and the end of the July Monarchy. The abolition of slavery and the introduction of male universal suffrage was re-enacted in 1848. In 1852, president of the French Republic, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, Napoleon I's nephew, was proclaimed emperor of the Second Empire, as Napoleon III. He multiplied French interventions abroad, especially in Crimea, Mexico and Italy. Napoleon III was unseated following defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, and his regime was replaced by the Third Republic. By 1875, the French conquest of Algeria was complete, with approximately 825,000 Algerians killed from famine, disease, and violence. France suffered an estimated 10,000 killed and 35,000 wounded across all colonial campaigns. A few thousand died in Mexico or Vietnam, but the vast majority perished in Algeria. Disease claimed an even heavier toll; one estimate puts total French and Foreign Legion deaths from battle and disease for the entire 19th century at 110,000.

France had colonial possessions since the beginning of the 17th century, but in the 19th and 20th centuries its empire extended significantly and became the second-largest behind the British Empire. Including metropolitan France, the total area reached almost 13 million square kilometres in the 1920s and 1930s, 9% of the world's land. Known as the Belle Époque, the turn of the century was characterised by optimism, regional peace, economic prosperity and technological, scientific and cultural innovations. In 1905, state secularism was officially established.

Early to mid-20th century (1914–1946)

During World War I, France played a decisive role in defeating the Central Powers as part of the Triple Entente, while participating in the majority of the war's major battles fought on the Western Front. A rich industrial area in the north was occupied. France and the Allies emerged victorious against the Central Powers at tremendous human cost. It left 1.4 million French soldiers dead, 4% of its population. In addition, France suffered 4,266,000 wounded. Interwar was marked by intense international tensions and social reforms introduced by the Popular Front government (e.g., annual leave, eight-hour workdays, women in government).

In 1940, France was invaded and quickly defeated by Nazi Germany. France was divided into a German occupation zone in the north, an Italian occupation zone and an unoccupied territory, the rest of France, which consisted of southern France and the French empire. The Vichy government, an authoritarian regime collaborating with Germany, ruled the unoccupied territory. Free France, the government-in-exile led by Charles de Gaulle, was set up in London.

From 1942 to 1944, about 160,000 French citizens, including around 75,000 Jews, were deported to death and concentration camps. On 6 June 1944, the Allies invaded Normandy, and in August they invaded Provence. The Allies and French Resistance emerged victorious, and French sovereignty was restored with the Provisional Government of the French Republic (GPRF). This interim government, established by de Gaulle, continued to wage war against Germany and to purge collaborators from office. It made important reforms e.g. suffrage extended to women and the creation of a social security system.

1946–present

A new constitution resulted in the Fourth Republic (1946–1958), which saw strong economic growth (les Trente Glorieuses). France was a founding member of NATO and attempted to regain control of French Indochina, but was defeated by the Viet Minh in 1954. France faced another anti-colonialist conflict in Algeria, then part of France and home to over one million European settlers (Pied-Noir). The French systematically used torture and repression, including extrajudicial killings to keep control. This conflict nearly led to a coup and civil war.

During the May 1958 crisis, the weak Fourth Republic gave way to the Fifth Republic, which included a strengthened presidency. The war concluded with the Évian Accords in 1962 which led to Algerian independence, at a high price: between half a million and one million deaths and over 2 million internally-displaced Algerians. Around one million Pied-Noirs and Harkis fled from Algeria to France. A vestige of the empire is the French overseas departments and territories.

During the Cold War, de Gaulle pursued a policy of "national independence" towards the Western and Eastern blocs. He withdrew from NATO's military-integrated command (while remaining within the alliance), launched a nuclear development programme and made France the fourth nuclear power. He restored cordial Franco-German relations to create a European counterweight between American and Soviet spheres of influence. However, he opposed any development of a supranational Europe, favouring sovereign nations. The revolt of May 1968 had an enormous social impact; it was a watershed moment when a conservative moral ideal (religion, patriotism, respect for authority) shifted to a more liberal moral ideal (secularism, individualism, sexual revolution). Although the revolt was a political failure (the Gaullist party emerged stronger than before) it announced a split between the French and de Gaulle, who resigned.

In the post-Gaullist era, France remained one of the most developed economies in the world but faced crises that resulted in high unemployment rates and increasing public debt. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, France has been at the forefront of the development of a supranational European Union, notably by signing the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, establishing the eurozone in 1999 and signing the Treaty of Lisbon in 2007. France has fully reintegrated into NATO and since participated in most NATO-sponsored wars.

Since the 19th century, France has received many immigrants, often male foreign workers from European Catholic countries who generally returned home when not employed. During the 1970s France faced an economic crisis and allowed new immigrants (mostly from the Maghreb, in northwest Africa) to permanently settle in France with their families and acquire citizenship. It resulted in hundreds of thousands of Muslims living in subsidised public housing and suffering from high unemployment rates. The government had a policy of assimilation of immigrants, where they were expected to adhere to French values and norms. From the 2000s, France experienced continued immigration from Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. In addition, Calais became a transit area for migrants.

Since the 1995 public transport bombings, France has been targeted by Islamist organisations, notably the Charlie Hebdo attack in 2015, which provoked the largest public rallies in French history, gathering 4.4 million people, and the November 2015 Paris attacks, which resulted in 130 deaths, the deadliest attack on French soil since World War II and the deadliest in the European Union since the Madrid train bombings in 2004. Opération Chammal, France's military efforts to contain ISIS, killed over 1,000 ISIS troops between 2014 and 2015.

Geography

The vast majority of France's territory and population is situated in Western Europe and is called Metropolitan France. It is bordered by the North Sea in the north, the English Channel in the northwest, the Atlantic Ocean in the west and the Mediterranean Sea in the southeast. Its land borders consist of Belgium and Luxembourg in the northeast, Germany and Switzerland in the east, Italy and Monaco in the southeast, and Andorra and Spain in the south and southwest. Except for the northeast, most of France's land borders are roughly delineated by natural boundaries and geographic features: to the south, the Pyrenees and the Alps; to the southeast, the Jura Mountains; and to the east, the Rhine river. Including Overseas France, it also borders Suriname and Brazil through French Guiana in South America, and the Netherlands through Saint Martin in the Caribbean. Metropolitan France includes various coastal islands, of which the largest is Corsica. Metropolitan France is situated mostly between latitudes 41° and 51° N, and longitudes 6° W and 10° E, on the western edge of Europe, and thus lies within the northern temperate zone. Its continental part covers about 1000 km from north to south and from east to west.

Metropolitan France covers 551,500 square kilometres (212,935 sq mi), the largest among European Union members. France's total land area, with its overseas departments and territories (excluding Adélie Land), is 643,801 km2 (248,573 sq mi), 0.45% of the total land area on Earth. France possesses a wide variety of landscapes, from coastal plains in the north and west to the mountain ranges of the Alps in the southeast, the Massif Central in the south-central and Pyrenees in the southwest. With numerous overseas departments and territories scattered across the planet, France possesses the second-largest exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the world, covering 11,035,000 km2 (4,261,000 sq mi). Its EEZ covers approximately 8% of the total surface of all the EEZs of the world.

Geology, topography and hydrography

Metropolitan France has a wide variety of topographic sets and natural landscapes. During the Hercynian uplift in the Paleozoic Era, the Armorican Massif, the Massif Central, the Morvan, the Vosges and Ardennes ranges and the island of Corsica were formed. These massifs delineate several sedimentary basins such as the Aquitaine Basin in the southwest and the Paris Basin in the north. Various routes of natural passage, such as the Rhône Valley, allow easy communication. The Alpine, Pyrenean and Jura Mountains are much younger and have less eroded forms. At 4,810.45 metres (15,782 ft) above sea level, Mont Blanc in the Alps is the highest point in Western Europe. 60% of municipalities are classified as having moderate seismic risk.

The coastlines offer contrasting landscapes: mountain ranges along the French Riviera, coastal cliffs such as the Côte d'Albâtre, and wide sandy plains in the Languedoc. Corsica lies off the Mediterranean coast. France has an extensive river system consisting of the four major rivers: the Seine, the Loire, the Garonne, the Rhône and their tributaries, whose combined catchment includes over 62% of the metropolitan territory. The Rhône divides the Massif Central from the Alps and flows into the Mediterranean Sea at the Camargue. The Garonne meets the Dordogne just after Bordeaux, forming the Gironde estuary, the largest estuary in Western Europe which after approximately 100 kilometres (62 mi) empties into the Atlantic Ocean. Other water courses drain towards the Meuse and Rhine along the northeastern borders. France has 11,000,000 km2 (4,200,000 sq mi) of marine waters within three oceans under its jurisdiction, of which 97% are overseas.

Environment

On June 28, 2019, in Vérargues, the temperature reached 46 °C, setting a temperature record in Metropolitan France since records began. Climate change means that this kind of heatwave in France can be expected to occur 10 times more frequently than it would have done a century ago. France was one of the first countries to create an environment ministry, in 1971. France is ranked 19th by carbon dioxide emissions due to the country's heavy investment in nuclear power following the 1973 oil crisis, which now accounts for 75 per cent of its electricity production and results in less pollution. According to the 2020 Environmental Performance Index conducted by Yale and Columbia, France was the fifth most environmentally conscious country in the world. Like all European Union state members, France agreed to cut carbon emissions by at least 20% of 1990 levels by 2020. As of 2009, carbon dioxide emissions per capita are lower than that of China. The country was set to impose a carbon tax in 2009; however, the plan was abandoned due to fears of it burdening French businesses.