Insee publishes detailed report situating France in relation to European neighbours. - The French National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies, Insee, has published a report on “France in the European Union 2008” to mark the French Presidency of the Council of the European Union. Insee touches on several areas of European statistics and provides detailed updated information on all the member states. The final chapter is devoted to relations between the EU and the Mediterranean rim. Very briefly, the report provides the following information: 1) Population: the EU forms 8% of the world's population, well behind China (20%) and India (17%), but ahead of the United States (5%). 63% of EU inhabitants live in the five most populated countries (Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy and Spain). Over the last 10 years, the EU population has grown by 4%, less than half as quickly as the US (10%). Migratory flows account for most of this increase. The population is ageing: 17% of Europeans are aged 65 or more, with 16% under the age of 15. Italy (20%), Germany (20%) and Greece (19%) have the highest percentages of older people, almost twice as many as Ireland (11%), Slovakia (12%) and Cyprus (12%). 2) Living conditions: housing (22%), food and transport/telecommunications (both 16%) are the three main areas of spending for households. Within the new member states, spending on food is particularly high (20%, compared with an EU average of 16%). 3) Social/health protection: social benefits accounted for an EU average of 27.2% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2005. Of the countries in the foremer EU15, it is in Ireland that social benefits are lowest (18.2% of GDP) and in Sweden that they are highest (32%). With the exceptions of Ireland and Luxemburg, northern European countries are generally above the average, while southern European countries (Spain, Greece, Italy and Portugal) generally give less of their GDP to social protection. Among the 12 new member states, Latvia is the one which has the lowest proportion (12.4%) and Slovenia the highest (23.4%). Education-Innovation: the average public spending on education as a proportion of GDP in the EU is 5.1%. Denmark spends most (8.5%) followed by Sweden (7.2%). Research and Development expenditure in the EU amounts to 1.84% of GDP. Spending is highest in Sweden (3.82%) and Finland (3.45%). These are the only two member states to spend more than the 3% set by the Lisbon Strategy. Labour market: in 2006, there were 233 million people working in the EU, with women accounting for almost 45% of that figure. The percentage of women in the working population is continuing to grow, but varies from 32.1% in Malta to 49.9% in Estonia, where parity has been achieved. The European average is 46.9%. A few countries have already exceeded European employment targets (Denmark, the United Kingdom and Sweden), but the remainder still have much to do. The average unemployment level in Europe fell from 8.1% to 7.1% between 2006 and 2007. Sustainable development: the EU imports a little over half the energy it uses (52.3%). Wide differences can be observed between high depended countries like Cyprus (100.7%), Malta (100%), Luxemburg (98%) and others which are much less dependent on imports of energy, such as the United Kingdom (13.9%), Poland (18%) and Estonia (25.8%). Renewable energy accounts for 6.7% of the EU's energy needs. Latvia, Sweden, Finland and Austria are the countries which most use renewable energy. 7) Economy-Finance: among those countries leading the way in terms of GDP per head of population in 2006 were Luxemburg, Ireland, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden. The group of new member states remains some way behind, with GDP of between 36.7% (Bulgaria) and 92.5% (Cyprus) of the European average. Production: with its successive enlargements, the EU has overtaken the United States to become the world's largest exporter. Agriculture is very important to the new member states (it provides almost 12% of jobs, compared with an EU15 average of 4%. Manufacturing industry has risen in particular in Bulgaria (10.5%) and Lithuania (10.2%), but has fallen in the United Kingdom and Italy. In the trade and services sector, there are wide differences between the north, where retail establishments employ between 8 and 15 people, and the south, where 2 to 3 people are employed. (I.L./transl.rt)