ABSTRACT
France's prospects were increasingly tied to the fate of the European Union, of which the country is an integral part, and to the functioning of a globalized world over which a medium-sized country can only exert minimal control. In July 1998, three years after the end of Franois Mitterrand's term as president, France hosted the World Cup soccer competition. More damaging to the right-wing government was Jupp's effort to reduce the cost of France's social security system, which had grown steadily since the end of the Second World War and was running large deficits. French consumers were slow at first to turn to the Internet, in part because the country had its own, more primitive national online network, the Minitel, introduced in 1984, but by the beginning of the new millennium, Internet use had taken off. In France, criticism of excessive American influence was often closely tied to a critique of a world economy dominated by the United States.
