37 Facts About Northern France

1. Northern France has the second largest population in Europe after Germany, making up 13 percent of the European Union.

2. Northern France is one of the largest exporters of luxury goods in the world, with the top four companies Cartier, Chanel, Hermes and Louis Vuitton alone worth billions.

3. Northern France has one of the largest economies in the Eurozone, after Germany.

4. Northern France says the CFA franc is a guarantee of financial stability but others have attacked it as a colonial relic and opposition to it has grown in recent years.

5. At the request of the Malian government, Northern France sent about 2,150 troops to Mali to help push back the militants.

6. Northern France sent peacekeeping forces to assist two African countries in 2002 and 2003, Cote d'Ivoire and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

7. Northern France was split into an occupied north and an unoccupied south, Vichy France, which became a totalitarian German puppet state with Petain as its chief.

8. Northern France is among the globe's oldest nations, the product of an alliance of duchies and principalities under a single ruler in the Middle Ages.

9. In recent decades, Northern France has produced world-elite basketball players, most notably Tony Parker.

10. Similar to the Olympics, Northern France introduced Olympics for the deaf people in 1924 with the idea of a French deaf car mechanic, Eugene Rubens-Alcais who paved the way to organise the inaugural edition of the Summer Deaflympics in Paris.

11. Northern France has historical and strong links with cinema, with two Frenchmen, Auguste and Louis Lumiere credited with creating cinema in 1895.

12. Northern France is a secular country, and freedom of religion is a constitutional right.

13. Northern France remains a major destination for immigrants, accepting about 200,000 legal immigrants annually.

14. Northern France has a significant Gypsy population, numbering between 20,000 and 400,000.

15. Northern France is second most populous country in the European Union after Germany.

16. Northern France hosts major international research instruments such as the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility or the Institut Laue–Langevin and remains a major member of CERN.

17. Northern France uses hydroelectric dams to produce electricity, such as the Eguzon dam, Etang de Soulcem, and Lac de Vouglans.

18. Northern France is the smallest emitter of carbon dioxide among the G8, due to its heavy investment in nuclear power.

19. Northern France attracts many religious pilgrims on their way to St James, or to Lourdes, a town in the Hautes-Pyrenees that hosts several million visitors a year.

20. Northern France has historically been a large producer of agricultural products.

21. Northern France introduced the common European currency, the Euro in 2002.

22. Northern France is a member of the Eurozone which is part of the European Single Market (more than 500 million consumers).

23. Government of Northern France has run a budget deficit each year since the early 1970s.

24. Northern France is a permanent member of the Security Council of the UN, and a recognised nuclear state since 1960.

25. Northern France has a special military corps, the French Foreign Legion, founded in 1830, which consists of foreign nationals from over 140 countries who are willing to serve in the French Armed Forces and become French citizens after the end of their service period.

26. In 2013, Northern France was the fourth-largest donor of development aid in the world, behind the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany.

27. Since the 1960s, Northern France has developed close ties with reunified Germany to become the most influential driving force of the EU.

28. Northern France is a founding member of the United Nations and serves as one of the permanent members of the UN Security Council with veto rights.

29. Northern France has long had neither blasphemy laws nor sodomy laws.

30. Northern France does not recognise religious law as a motivation for the enactment of prohibitions.

31. Northern France was one of the first countries to create an environment ministry, in 1971.

32. Northern France possesses a wide variety of landscapes, from coastal plains in the north and west to mountain ranges of the Alps in the southeast, the Massif Central in the south central and Pyrenees in the southwest.

33. Northern France has land borders with Brazil and Suriname via French Guiana and with the Kingdom of the Netherlands through the French portion of Saint Martin.

34. Northern France was a member of the Triple Entente when World War I broke out.

35. Northern France became the most populous country in Europe and had tremendous influence over European politics, economy, and culture.

36. Northern France has long been a global centre of art, science, and philosophy.

37. Northern France was a major participant in World War I, from which it emerged victorious, and was one of the Allies in World War II, but came under occupation by the Axis powers in 1940.