The Banque de France is the central bank of France; it is linked to the European Central Bank (ECB). Its main charge is to implement the interest rate policy of the European System of Central Banks (ESCB). It is headquartered in Paris.

On 1 June 1998, a new institution was created, the European Central Bank (ECB), charged with steering the single monetary policy for the euro. The body formed by the ECB, and the national central banks (NCB) of all the member states of the European Union, constitute the European System of Central Banks (ESCB).

The ESCB is an institutional framework of a single monetary policy for the euro. According to the Banque de France's website, the "sharing of responsibilities between the ECB and the NCBs is based upon significant decentralization of the conduct of the ESCB's single monetary policy".

In 2010, the French government's Autorité de la concurrence (the department in charge of regulating competition) fined eleven banks, including Banque de France, the sum of €384,900,000 for colluding to charge unjustified fees on check processing, especially for extra fees charged during the transition from paper check transfer to "Exchanges Check-Image" electronic transfer.

France (English ⁱ/ˈfræns/ FRANSS or /ˈfrɑːns/ FRAHNSS; French: [fʁɑ̃s] ( listen)), officially the French Republic (French: République française [ʁepyblik fʁɑ̃sɛz]), is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean. It is often referred to as l’Hexagone ("The Hexagon") because of the geometric shape of its territory. It is the largest western European country and it possesses the second-largest exclusive economic zone in the world, covering 11,035,000 km² (4,260,000 sq mi), just behind that of the United States (11,351,000 km² / 4,383,000 sq mi).

Over the past 500 years, France has been a major power with strong cultural, economic, military and political influence in Europe and around the world. During the 17th and 18th centuries, France colonised great parts of North America and Southeast Asia; during the 19th and early 20th centuries, France built the second largest colonial empire of the time, including large portions of North, West and Central Africa, Southeast Asia, and many Caribbean and Pacific Islands.

Michel Rocard (French pronunciation: [miʃɛl ʁɔkaʁ]; born 23 August 1930) is a French politician, member of the Socialist Party (PS). He served as Prime Minister under François Mitterrand from 1988 to 1991, during which he created the Revenu minimum d'insertion (RMI), a social minimum welfare program for indigents, and led the Matignon Accords regarding the status of New Caledonia. He is currently a member of the European Parliament, and has been strongly involved in European policies. As of August 2007, he has accepted a mission in a Commission under the authority of Sarkozy's Minister of Education, Xavier Darcos.

He was born at Courbevoie (Hauts-de-Seine) in a Protestant family, son of the nuclear physicist Yves Rocard, and entered politics as a student leader whilst studying at the Paris Institute of Political Studies (a.k.a. Sciences-Po). He became Chair of the French Socialist Students (linked to the main French Socialist party at the time, the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO)), and studied at the École nationale d'administration (ENA). A finance inspector (senior official) and anti-colonialist, he went to Algeria and wrote a report regarding the widely ignored refugee camps of the Algerian War (1954–62). This report was leaked to the newspapers Le Monde and France Observateur in April 1959, almost costing Rocard his job.