France , officially the French Republic, is a sovereign state comprising territory in western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. France 643,801 square kilometers (248,573 sq mi) and has a total population of 66.7 million. Its capital is Paris and the largest City of France. France hosts Europe’s third-largest number of cultural UNESCO World Heritage Sites (after Italy and Spain) and receives around 83 million foreign tourists annually, the most of any country in the world. France is a developed country with the world’s sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of aggregate household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, and human development. France remains a great power in the world, being a founding member of the United Nations, where it serves as one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, and a founding and leading member state of the European Union.

Geography

The European part of France is called Metropolitan France and it is located in one of the occidental ends of Europe. It is bordered by the North Sea in the north, the English Channel in the north-west, the Atlantic Ocean in the west and the Mediterranean Sea in the south-east. It borders Belgium and Luxembourg in the north east. It also borders Germany and Switzerland in the east, Italy and Monaco in the south-east, Spain and Andorra in the south west. The borders in the south and in the east of the country are mountain range. France covers 551,500 square kilometers (212,935 sq mi), the largest among European Union members.