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France has an important aerospace industry (lead by Airbus Industrie) and is the only European power to have its own national space centre. France is also the most energy independent Western country due to heavy investment in nuclear power, which also makes France the smallest producer of carbon dioxide among the seven most industrialised countries in the world. Large tracts of fertile land, the application of modern technology, and EU subsidies have combined to make France the leading agricultural producer in Western Europe.

The constitution does not contain a bill of rights in itself, but its preamble mentions that France should follow the principles of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, as well as those of the preamble to the constitution of the Fourth Republic. This has been judged to imply that the principles laid in those texts had constitutional value, and that legislation infringing on those principles should be found unconstitutional.

Due to its numerous 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 kmē (4,260,000 sq. miles), just behind the EEZ of the United States (11,351,000 kmē / 4,383,000 sq. miles), but ahead of the EEZ of Australia (8,232,000 kmē / 3,178,000 sq. miles). According to a different calculation cited by the Pew Research Center, the EEZ of France would be 10,084,201 kmē (3,893,532 sq. miles), behind the United States (12,174,629 kmē / 4,700,651 sq. miles), but ahead of Australia (8,980,568 kmē / 3,467,416 sq. miles) and Russia (7,566,673 kmē / 2,921,508 sq. miles).

A growing urban-based Protestant minority (later dubbed Huguenots) faced ever harsher repression under the rule of King Henri II. Renewed Catholic reaction headed by the powerful dukes of Guise culminated in a massacre of Huguenots (1562), starting the first of the French Wars of Religion, during which English, (Scottish?), German and Spanish forces intervened on the side of rival Protestant and Catholic forces.

Louis XVI's reign (1774-1792) saw a temporary revival of French fortunes through intervention (1778-1783) in support of Britain's rebel American colonies. But the over-ambitious projects and military campaigns the past century had produced chronic financial problems. Deteriorating economic conditions, popular resentment against the complicated system of privileges granted the nobility and clerics, and a lack of alternate avenues for change were among the principal causes of the French Revolution. This led to the formation of the First Republic on September 21, 1792.