Business Negotiation

. Do not sit until invited and told where to sit. There is a rigid protocol to be followed.
. Meetings adhere to strict agendas, including starting and ending times.
. Treat the process with the formality that it deserves.
. Germany is heavily regulated and extremely bureaucratic.
. Germans prefer to get down to business and only engage in the briefest of small talk. They will be interested in your credentials.
. Make sure your printed material is available in both English and German.
. Contracts are strictly followed.
. You must be patient and not appear ruffled by the strict adherence to protocol. Germans are detail- oriented and want to understand every innuendo before coming to an agreement.
. Business is hierarchical. Decision-making is held at the top of the company.
. Final decisions are translated into rigorous, comprehensive action steps that you can expect will be carried out to the letter.
. Avoid confrontational behaviour or high- pressure tactics. It can be counterproductive.
. Once a decision is made, it will not be changed.

Dress Etiquette

. Business dress is understated, formal and conservative.
. Men should wear dark coloured, conservative business suits.
. Women should wear either business suits or conservative dresses.
. Do not wear ostentatious jewellery or accessories.

FRANCE

Facts and Statistics

Location: Western Europe, bordering Andorra 56.6 km, Belgium 620 km, Germany 451 km,
Italy 488 km, Luxembourg 73 km, Monaco 4.4 km, Spain 623 km, Switzerland 573 km

Capital: Paris

Climate: generally cool winters and mild summers, but mild winters and hot summers along
the Mediterranean; occasional strong, cold, dry, north-to-northwesterly wind known as mistral

Population: 60,424,213 (July 2004 est.)

Ethnic Make-up: Celtic and Latin with Teutonic, Slavic, North African, Indochinese, Basque minorities

Religions: Roman Catholic 83%-88%, Protestant 2%, Jewish 1%, Muslim 5%-10%, unaffiliated
4%

Government: republic

Languages in France

French, the official language, is the first language of 88% of the population. Most of those who speak minority languages also speak French, as the minority languages are given no legal recognition. 3% of the population speak German dialects, predominantly in the eastern provinces of Alsace-Lorraine and Moselle. Flemish is spoken by around 90,000 people in the northeast, which is 0.2% of the French population. Around 1m people near the Italian border, roughly 1.7% of the population, speaks Italian.
Basque is spoken by 0.1% and mainly along the French-Spanish border.

Catalan dialects are spoken in the French Pyrenees by around 260,000 people or 0.4% of the French population.
The Celtic language, Breton, is spoken by 1.2% and mainly in the north west of France. These three languages have no official status within France.

In the South of France, over 7m speak Occitan dialects, representing 12% of the population of France, but these dialects have no official status. Nor too does Corsu, the dialect of the island of Corsica that is closely related to Tuscan and is spoken by 0.3%.
Arabic, the third largest minority language, is spoken by around 1.7% of the population throughout the country. Other immigrant languages from the former French colonies include Kabyle and Antillean Creole.

Why not learn some useful French phrases?

French Society & Culture

Cuisine

. Food is one of the great passions of the French people.
. French cooking is highly refined and involves careful preparation, attention to detail, and the use of fresh ingredients.
. It varies by region and is heavily influenced by what is grown locally.

Date: 2016-03-03; view: 896