បារាំង: Governance

Governance 

 Government 

thumb|left|Logo of the French Republic|តំនភ្ជាប់=Special:FilePath/Logo_de_la_République_française.svg

The French Republic is a unitary semi-presidential republic with strong democratic traditions. The constitution of the Fifth Republic was approved by referendum on 28 September 1958.France: Fifth Republic  – Flags of the World It greatly strengthened the authority of the executive in relation to parliament. The executive branch itself has two leaders: the President of the Republic, currently François Hollande, who is head of state and is elected directly by universal adult suffrage for a 5-year term (formerly 7 years), Le quinquennat : le référendum du 24 Septembre 2000 and the Government, led by the president-appointed Prime Minister, currently Jean-Marc Ayrault.

thumb|upright|François Hollande, elected President of the French Republic in April 2012.

The French parliament is a bicameral legislature comprising a National Assembly (Assemblée Nationale) and a Senate.The National Assembly and the Senate – General Characteristics of the Parliament. Official Site of the French National Assembly The National Assembly deputies represent local constituencies and are directly elected for 5-year terms.Election of deputies. Official Site of the National Assembly The Assembly has the power to dismiss the cabinet, and thus the majority in the Assembly determines the choice of government. Senators are chosen by an electoral college for 6-year terms (originally 9-year terms), and one half of the seats are submitted to election every 3 years starting in September 2008.The senatorial elections. Official Site of the Senate

The Senate's legislative powers are limited; in the event of disagreement between the two chambers, the National Assembly has the final say. Le role du Sénat The government has a strong influence in shaping the agenda of Parliament.

French politics are characterised by two politically opposed groupings: one left-wing, centred around the French Socialist Party, and the other right-wing, centred previously around the Rassemblement pour la République (RPR) and now its successor the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP).  Since the 2012 elections, the executive branch is currently composed mostly of the Socialist Party.

 ច្បាប់ 

France uses a civil legal system; that is, law arises primarily from written statutes; judges are not to make law, but merely to interpret it (though the amount of judicial interpretation in certain areas makes it equivalent to case law). Basic principles of the rule of law were laid in the Napoleonic Code (which was, in turn, largely based on the royal law codified under Louis XIV). In agreement with the principles of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, law should only prohibit actions detrimental to society. As Guy Canivet, first president of the Court of Cassation, wrote about the management of prisons: Freedom is the rule, and its restriction is the exception; any restriction of Freedom must be provided for by Law and must follow the principles of necessity and proportionality. That is, Law should lay out prohibitions only if they are needed, and if the inconveniences caused by this restriction do not exceed the inconveniences that the prohibition is supposed to remedy.
thumb|upright|The basic principles that the French Republic must respect are found in the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen

French law is divided into two principal areas: private law and public law. Private law includes, in particular, civil law and criminal law. Public law includes, in particular, administrative law and constitutional law. However, in practical terms, French law comprises three principal areas of law: civil law, criminal law, and administrative law. Criminal laws can only address the future and not the past (criminal ex post facto laws are prohibited). While administrative law is often a subcategory of civil law in many countries, it is completely separated in France and each body of law is headed by a specific supreme court: ordinary courts (which handle criminal and civil litigation) are headed by the Court of Cassation and administrative courts are headed by the Council of State.

To be applicable, every law must be officially published in the Journal officiel de la République française.

France does not recognize religious law as a motivation for the enactment of prohibitions. France has long had neither blasphemy laws nor sodomy laws (the latter being abolished in 1791). However, "offenses against public decency" (contraires aux bonnes mœurs) or disturbing public order (trouble à l'ordre public) have been used to repress public expressions of homosexuality or street prostitution. Laws prohibiting discriminatory speech in the press are as old as 1881. Some consider however that hate speech laws in France are too broad or severe and damage freedom of speech. France has laws against racism and antisemitism. La lutte contre le racisme et l'antisémintisme en France. AmbaFrance

France's attitude towards freedom of religion is complex. Freedom of religion is guaranteed by the constitutional rights set forth in the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. However, since the 1905 French law on the Separation of the Churches and the State, the State tries to prevent its policy-making from being influenced by religion and became suspicious in recent decades towards new religious tendencies of the French society: the Parliament has listed many religious movements as dangerous cults since 1995, and has banned wearing conspicuous religious symbols in schools since 2004. In 2010, it banned the wearing of face-covering Islamic veils in public. As some have complained that they have suffered from discrimination thus, and after criticism by human rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, these laws remain controversial, although they are supported by most of the population.

France is tolerant of the LGBT community. Since 1999, civil unions for homosexual couples are permitted, and since May 2013, same-sex marriage and LGBT adoption are legal in France.

 Foreign relations 

France is a member of the United Nations and serves as one of the permanent members of the UN Security Council with veto rights.Membership of the Security Councils of the UN  on the Official Site of the UN It is also a member of the G8, World Trade Organization (WTO), the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC)History on the Official Site of the SPC and the Indian Ocean Commission (COI). Pays membres  – Site officiel de la COI  It is an associate member of the Association of Caribbean States (ACS) and a leading member of the International Francophone Organisation (OIF) of fifty-one fully or partly French-speaking countries. États et gouvernements : le monde de la Francophonie  – Site officiel de l'OIF 

thumb|right|French President François Mitterrand and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, in 1987.
thumb|Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy and United States President Barack Obama, before NATO summit, in Strasbourg, on 3 April 2009
France hosts the headquarters of the OECD,History of the Château de la Muette, OECD headquarters, Paris – Official Site of the OECD  UNESCO,Paris Headquarters on the Official Site of UNESCO Interpol, Alliance Base "Alliance Base" existe bien – L'Express and the International Bureau for Weights and Measures. France has the second largest network of diplomatic missions in the world, second only to the USA.Embassies and consulates on the Official Site of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of France In 1953, France received a request from the United Nations to pick a coat of arms that would represent it internationally. Thus the French emblem was adopted and is currently used on passports. Le faisceau de licteur  – Présidence de la République

Postwar French foreign policy has been largely shaped by membership of the European Union, of which it was a founding member. Since the 1960s, France has developed close ties with reunified Germany to become the most influential driving force of the EU. L'alliance franco-allemande au coeur de la puissance européenne  In the 1960s, France sought to exclude the British from the European unification process, seeking to build its own standing in continental Europe. However, since 1904, France has maintained an "Entente cordiale" with the United Kingdom, and there has been a strengthening of links between the countries, especially militarily.

France is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), but under President de Gaulle, it excluded itself from the joint military command to protest the special relationship between the United States and Britain and to preserve the independence of French foreign and security policies. Quand Mitterrand, déjà, négociait le retour de la France dans l'OTAN – Le Figaro France vigorously opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq, straining bilateral relations with the US and the UK. France-Diplomatie : Royaume-Uni  – Ministère des Affaires Étrangères However, as a result of Nicolas Sarkozy's pro-American politics (much criticised in France by the leftists and by a part of the right),  France rejoined the NATO joint military command on 4 April 2009.

In the early 1990s, the country drew considerable criticism from other nations for its underground nuclear tests in French Polynesia.

France retains strong political and economic influence in its former African colonies (Françafrique) L'empire colonial français and has supplied economic aid and troops for peace-keeping missions in Ivory Coast and Chad. Recently, after the unilateral declaration of independence of northern Mali by the Tuareg MNLA and the subsequent regional Northern Mali conflict with several Islamist groups including Ansar Dine and MOJWA, France and other African states intervened to help the Malian Army to retake control.

In 2009, France was the second largest (in absolute numbers) donor of development aid in the world, behind the US, and ahead of Germany, Japan and the UK.Net Official Development Assistance 2009 OECD This represents 0.5% of its GDP, in this regard rating France as tenth largest donor on the list. The organisation managing the French help is the French Development Agency, which finances primarily humanitarian projects in sub-Saharan Africa. The main goals of this help are "developing infrastructure, access to health care and education, the implementation of appropriate economic policies and the consolidation of the rule of law and democracy."France priorities  – France Diplomatie

 Military 

thumb|upright=1.5|Examples of France's military. Clockwise from top left: Nuclear aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle; A Rafale fighter aircraft; French Chasseurs Alpins patrolling the valleys of Kapisa province in Afghanistan; a Leclerc tank in Paris for the 14 July Bastille Day Military Parade.

The French Armed Forces (Armées françaises) are the military and paramilitary forces of France, under the president as supreme commander. They consist of the French Army (Armée de Terre), French Navy (Marine Nationale), the French Air Force (Armée de l'Air) and the auxiliary paramilitary force, the National Gendarmerie (Gendarmerie nationale) and are among the largest armed forces in the world. While administratively a part of the French armed forces, and therefore under the purview of the Ministry of Defence, the Gendarmerie is operationally attached to the Ministry of the Interior.

The gendarmerie is a military police force which serves for the most part as a rural and general purpose police force. It encompasses the counter terrorist units of the Parachute Intervention Squadron of the National Gendarmerie (Escadron Parachutiste d'Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale) and the National Gendarmerie Intervention Group (Groupe d'Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale). One of the French intelligence units, the Directorate-General for External Security (Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure) reports to the Ministry of Defence. The other, the Central Directorate of Interior Intelligence (Direction Centrale du Renseignement Intérieur), reports directly to the Ministry of the Interior. There has been no national conscription since 1997. La fin du service militaire obligatoire – La documentation française

France is a permanent member of the Security Council of the UN, and a recognised nuclear state since 1960. France has signed and ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) and acceeded to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. France's annual military expenditure in 2011 was US$62.5 billion, or 2.3%, of its GDP making it the fifth biggest military spender in the world after the United States, China, Russia, and the United Kingdom.

French nuclear deterrence, (formerly known as “Force de Frappe”), relies on complete independence. The current French nuclear force consists of four Triomphant class submarines equipped with submarine-launched ballistic missiles. In addition to the submarine fleet, it is estimated that France has about 60 ASMP medium-range air-to-ground missiles with nuclear warheads, Centre de Documentation et de Recherche sur la Paix et les Conflits, Etat des forces nucléaires françaises au 15 août 2004  of which around 50 are deployed by the Air Force using the Mirage 2000N long-range nuclear strike aircraft, while around 10 are deployed by the French Navy's Super Étendard Modernisé (SEM) attack aircraft which operate from the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle. The new Rafale F3 aircraft will gradually replace all Mirage 2000N and SEM in the nuclear strike role with the improved ASMP-A missile with a nuclear warhead.

France has major military industries with one of the largest aerospace industries in the world. Its industries have produced such equipment as the Rafale fighter, the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier, the Exocet missile and the Leclerc tank amongst others. Despite withdrawing from the Eurofighter project, France is actively investing in European joint projects such as the Eurocopter Tiger, multipurpose frigates, the UCAV demonstrator nEUROn and the Airbus A400M. France is a major arms seller,"En 2001, la France a vendu pour 1,288 milliard de dollars d'équipements militaires, ce qui la met au troisième rang mondial des exportateurs derrière les États-Unis et la Russie." " In 2001, France sold $1,288 billion of military equipment, ranking 3rd in the world for arms exportations behind the USA and Russia" La France demeure un fournisseur d'armes de premier plan (France stays one of the biggest arms supplier)  – L'express. 13 June 2002"La France est au 4ème rang mondial des exportateurs d'armes, derrière les Etats-Unis, le Royaume-Uni et la Russie, et devant Israël, selon un rapport du ministère de la Défense publié l'an dernier." "France is 4th biggest arms exportator, behind the USA, the UK and Russia, and ahead of Israel, according to a report of the Ministry of Defense published a year ago" Arms sellings explode in 2009 – 20 minutes with most of its arsenal's designs available for the export market with the notable exception of nuclear-powered devices.

The military parade held in Paris each 14 July for France's national day is the oldest and largest regular military parade in Europe.Mail Online, Harrowing loss of Afghanistan troops overshadows France's Bastille Day military parade, 14 July 2011. . Retrieved 5 January 2012

 ហិរញ្ញវត្ថុរបស់រដ្ឋាភិបាល 

thumb|upright=1.25|French government borrowing (budget deficits) as a percentage of GNP, 1960–2009

In April and May 2012, France held a presidential election in which the winner, François Hollande, had opposed austerity measures, promising to eliminate France's budget deficit by 2017. The new government stated that it aimed to cancel recently enacted tax cuts and exemptions for the wealthy, raising the top tax bracket rate to 75% on incomes over a million euros, restoring the retirement age to 60 with a full pension for those who have worked 42 years, restoring 60,000 jobs recently cut from public education, regulating rent increases; and building additional public housing for the poor.

In June, Hollande's Socialist Party won a supermajority in legislative elections capable of amending the French Constitution and enabling the immediate enactment of the promised reforms. French government bond interest rates fell 30% to record lows,Bloomberg (2012) French government bond interest rates (graph) less than 50 basis points above German government bond rates.Bloomberg (2012) German government bond interest rates (graph)

 បំណុលរដ្ឋាភិបាល 
Under European Union rules, member states are supposed to limit their debt to 60% of output or be reducing the ratio structurally towards this ceiling, and run public deficits of no more than 3% of GDP. The French government has run a budget deficit each year since the early 1970s. In 2012, French government debt levels reached 1.8 trillion euros, the equivalent of 90% of French GDP.

In late 2012, credit rating agencies warned that growing French government debt levels risked France's AAA credit rating, raising the possibility of a future downgrade and subsequent higher borrowing costs for the French government.