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Map of the members of the Paris Club

The Paris Club (French: Club de Paris) is an informal group of financial officials from 19 of some of the world's biggest economies, which provides financial services such as war funding, debt restructuring, debt relief, and debt cancellation to indebted countries and their creditors. Debtors are often recommended by the International Monetary Fund after alternative solutions have failed.^{[citation needed]}

It meets every six weeks at the French Ministry of the Economy, Finance, and Industry in Paris. It is chaired by a senior official of the French Treasury, currently the Director General of the Treasury [Ramon Fernandez]. The club grew out of crisis talks held in Paris in 1956 between the nation of Argentina and its various creditors. Its principles and procedures were codified at the end of the 1970s in the context of the North-South Dialogue.^{[citation needed]}

Contemporary events[link]

1990s[link]

In the 1990s, the club began to treat the HIPC (Heavily-Indebted Poor Countries) and non-HIPCs differently. The club began to grant increasingly larger debt reductions for the HIPCs.^{[citation needed]} For the non-HIPCs, the club engaged less in debt reductions and moved towards encouraging the absorption of non-HIPCs' financial losses by bondholders and other private creditors.

2000s[link]

In 2004, the Club decided to write-off the debts of Iraq, as the rebuilding of Iraq is incomparable.^{[clarification needed]} After the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, the Paris Club decided to suspend temporarily some of the repayment obligations of the affected countries.

In November 2005, during the tenure of Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as Nigeria's Minister of Finance,^[1] the Nigerian government "won Paris Club approval for a debt-relief deal that eliminated $18 billion of debt in exchange for $12 billion in payments ...". This discharged "...$30 billion of Nigeria's total $37 billion external debt."^[2]

In April 2006, Nigeria became the first African country to fully pay off its debt (estimated $30 billion) owed to the Paris Club."Nigeria settles Paris Club debt". BBC. 2006-04-21. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4926966.stm. Retrieved 2012-05-11. 

On September 2, 2008, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of Argentina announced plans to pay off the entirety of debt owed to the Paris Club, which amounted to roughly $6.7 billion. Political pressures ensued and though the government officially insists its intention to repay,^[3] government officials have stated that this is unlikely until global credit conditions improve.^[4]

On September 16, 2010, the Paris Club canceled 1.26 billion dollars of Liberia's debt, 100% of the Paris Club's share of a World Bank-IMF poverty reduction program.^[5]

On November 18, 2010, the Paris Club canceled $7.35Bn of Democratic Republic of the Congo's debt. This resulted in the removal of over 50% of their debt.^{[citation needed]}

Members[link]

Permanent Members[link]

Associated[link]

Observers[link]

Former Chairpersons[link]

Incomplete list:

• Jean-Pierre Jouyet
• Jean-Claude Trichet

The complete list of Paris Club Chairmen, and much other useful information about the Paris Club's history and operations, can be found in "Sovereign Debt Restructuring: the Case for Ad Hoc Machinery", by Lex Rieffel (Brookings Institution Press, 2003).

Current chairperson[link]

• Xavier Musca

See also[link]

economics portal

• London Club
• Developing countries' debt

References[link]

External links[link]

• Paris Club Official Website

Articles[link]

• Paris Club Agrees On Iraqi Debt Write-Off (washingtonpost.com)
• Paris Club agrees to cancel Liberian debt

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Paris
Motto: Fluctuat nec mergitur (Latin: "It is tossed by the waves, but does not sink")
Paris, with the Eiffel Tower in the foreground and the skyscrapers of La Défense in the background
City flag	City coat of arms
Paris
Location within Île-de-France region  Paris
Administration
Country	France
Region	Île-de-France
Department	Paris
Mayor	Bertrand Delanoë (PS) (2008–2014)
Statistics
Land area1 [1]	105.4 km2 (40.7 sq mi)
Population2	2,211,297  (Jan. 2008[2])
- Ranking	1st in France
- Density	20,980 /km2 (54,300 /sq mi)
Urban area	2,845 km2 (1,098 sq mi) (2010)
- Population	10,354,675[3] (Jan. 2008)
Metro area	17,175 km2 (6,631 sq mi) (2010)
- Population	12,089,098[4] (Jan. 2008)
Time zone	CET (UTC +1)
INSEE/Postal code	75056/ 75001-75020, 75116
Website	www.paris.fr
1 French Land Register data, which excludes lakes, ponds, glaciers > 1 km² (0.386 sq mi or 247 acres) and river estuaries.
2 Population without double counting: residents of multiple communes (e.g., students and military personnel) only counted once.

Coordinates: 48°51′24″N 2°21′03″E / 48.8567°N 2.3508°E / 48.8567; 2.3508

Paris (ⁱ/ˈpærɨs/; French: [paʁi] ( listen)) is the capital and largest city of France. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region (or Paris Region, French: Région parisienne). As of January 2008 the city of Paris, within its administrative limits (the 20 arrondissements) largely unchanged since 1860, has an estimated population of 2,211,297^[2] and a metropolitan population of 12,089,098^[4], and is one of the most populated metropolitan areas in Europe.^[5] Paris was the largest city in the Western world for about 1,000 years, prior to the 19th century, and the largest in the entire world between the 16th and 19th centuries.^[6][7][8]

Paris is today one of the world's leading business and cultural centres, and its influences in politics, education, entertainment, media, fashion, science, and the arts all contribute to its status as one of the world's major global cities.^{[9][10][11][12]} It hosts the headquarters of many international organizations such as UNESCO, the OECD, the International Chamber of Commerce or the European Space Agency. Paris is considered one of the greenest^[13] and most liveable^[14] cities in Europe. It is also one of the most expensive.^[15][16]

Paris and the Paris Region, with €552.1 billion (US$768.9 billion) in 2009, produce more than a quarter of the gross domestic product of France.^[17] According to 2008 estimates, the Paris agglomeration is Europe's biggest^[18] or second biggest^[19] city economy and the sixth largest in the world.^[20] The Paris region is the first in Europe in terms of research and development capability and expenditure^[21] and through its 17 universities and 55 grandes écoles has the highest concentration of higher education students in the European Union.^[21] With about 42 million tourists annually in the city and its suburbs,^[21] Paris is the most visited city in the world. The city and its region contain 3,800 historical monuments and four UNESCO World Heritage Sites.^[21]

Etymology[link]

The name Paris derives from that of its earliest inhabitants, the Gaulish tribe known as the Parisii. The city was called Lutetia (more fully, Lutetia Parisiorum, "Lutetia of the Parisii"), during the Roman era of the 1st to the 6th century, but during the reign of Julian the Apostate (360–363), the city was renamed Paris.^[22]

It is believed that the name of the Parisii tribe comes from the Celtic Gallic word parisio meaning "the working people" or "the craftsmen."^[23]

Paris has many nicknames, but its most famous is "La Ville-Lumière" ("The City of Light"),^[24] a name it owes first to its fame as a centre of education and ideas during the Age of Enlightenment, and later to its early adoption of street lighting.^[25] Since the mid-19th century, Paris has been known as Paname^[26] ([panam]) in the Parisian slang called argot ( Moi j'suis d'Paname, i.e. "I'm from Paname"). The singer Renaud repopularized the term amongst the young generation^[26] with his 1976 album Amoureux de Paname ("In love with Paname").

Paris' inhabitants are known in English as "Parisians" and in French as Parisiens ([paʁizjɛ̃] ( listen)). Parisians are often pejoratively called Parigots ([paʁiɡo] ( listen)), a term first used in 1900^[27] by those living outside the Paris region.

See Wiktionary for the name of Paris in various languages other than English and French.

History[link]

The Gallo-Roman baths Thermes de Cluny at the Musée de Cluny, in Paris's Latin Quarter.

Origins[link]

The earliest archaeological signs of permanent settlements in the Paris area date from around 4200 BC.^[28] The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, inhabited the area near the river Seine from around 250 BC.^[29][30] The Romans conquered the Paris basin in 52 BC,^[28] with a permanent settlement by the end of the same century on the Left Bank Sainte Geneviève Hill and the Île de la Cité. The Gallo-Roman town was originally called Lutetia, or Lutetia Parisorum but later Gallicised to Lutèce. It expanded greatly over the following centuries, becoming a prosperous city with a forum, palaces, baths, temples, theatres, and an amphitheatre.^[31]  

The collapse of the Roman empire and the 5th-century Germanic invasions sent the city into a period of decline. By AD 400, Lutèce, largely abandoned by its inhabitants, was little more than a garrison town entrenched into a hastily fortified central island.^[28] The city reclaimed its original appellation of "Paris" towards the end of the Roman occupation.

Merovingian and Feudal Eras[link]

The Paris region was under full control of the Germanic Franks by the late 5th century. The Frankish king Clovis the Frank, the first king of the Merovingian dynasty, made the city his capital from 508. The late 8th century Carolingian dynasty displaced the Frankish capital to Aachen; this period coincided with the beginning of Viking invasions that had spread as far as Paris by the early 9th century.

Repeated invasions forced Parisians to build a fortress on the Île de la Cité. One of the most remarkable Viking raids was on 28 March 845, when Paris was sacked and held ransom, probably by Ragnar Lodbrok, who left only after receiving a large bounty paid by the crown. The weakness of the late Carolingian kings of France led to the gradual rise in power of the Counts of Paris; Odo, Count of Paris, was elected king of France by feudal lords, and the end of the Carolingian empire came in 987 when Hugh Capet, count of Paris, was elected king of France. Paris, under the Capetian kings, became a capital once more.

Middle Ages to 19th century[link]

The Château de Vincennes, with its 52 m high keep, was built between the 14th and 17th century.

Paris's population was around 200,000^[32] when the Black Death arrived in 1348, killing as many as 800 people a day; and 40,000 died from the plague in 1466.^[33] During the 16th and 17th centuries, plague visited the city for almost one year out of three.^[34] Paris lost its position as seat of the French realm during the occupation by the English-allied Burgundians during the Hundred Years' War, but regained its title when Charles VII of France reclaimed the city from English rule in 1436. Paris from then on became France's capital once again in title, but France's real centre of power would remain in the Loire Valley^[35] until King Francis I returned France's crown residences to Paris in 1528.