"... Here's a computer translation of the email: «The project of RGI presented at the time of the last committee of the reference frames of October 12, 2007 had been put on standby, following the step engaged in the ISO by the ECMA concerning the OpenXML standard.

"I think this is a question worth asking. Although this links to an article in French, you’ll probably get the idea: Bill Gates is visiting my beautiful city, Paris, just like many other well-known figures the U.S have brought to the world, such as Britney Spears, Georges W. Bush and Mr Potato. The major difference with them is that Bill Gates did not have to avoid mobs of curious people or fans (although I think Mr Potato managed to spend some time pretty much anonymously ).

"The Committee on Culture and Education of the European Parliament is preparing to vote on a draft report basis about cultural industries in the context of the Lisbon strategy. Some amendments taking again the main guidelines of the Olivennes mission have just been registered. As a matter of fact, we have sent the following message to MEPs of the culture committee..."

France’s ministry for education has migrated 2,500 servers across its 30 local education authorities to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, in line with the ministry's open-source investment strategy to avoid problems associated with vendor lock-in

Here's the story from France so far. Apparently, the majority voted No with Comments in a pre-vote, but I understand France is a country that must reach consensus.