2004 in France

Incumbents

• President – Jacques Chirac
• Prime Minister – Jean-Pierre Raffarin

Events

• 3 January – Flash Airlines Flight 604 headed for Cairo crashes into the Red Sea. All 148 people on board are killed, of whom more than 120 were French tourists.
• 30 January – Former prime minister and current mayor of Bordeaux, Alain Juppe, is convicted of a party funding scam in the 1980s and early 1990s.
• 31 January – Air France and British Airways cancel five upcoming US flights to Washington, D.C., and Miami, Florida, amid fears of Al-Qaida.
• 10 February – The French National Assembly votes to pass a law banning religious items and clothing from schools.
• 20 February – The insecticide Regent, from BASF, is banned in France for its implication in pollinator decline.
• 1 March – French troops are deployed to Haiti.
• 21–28 March – Regional elections held, in which the government of Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin suffers a stunning and unprecedented defeat.
• 5 April – Elizabeth II, Queen of the United Kingdom, begins a state visit to France in honour of the centennial of the Entente Cordiale. The following day, she addresses the French Senate.
• 23 April – The last coal mine in France closes, La Houve near Creutzwald, ending nearly 300 years of coal mining.
• 23 May – A section of the ceiling in Terminal 2E at Paris's Charles de Gaulle Airport collapses, claiming at least 6 lives.
• 27 May – Peugeot launches the 407 range of sedans, estates and coupes. It replaces the successful 406.
• 5 June – Noël Mamère, the mayor of Bègles, conducts a marriage ceremony for two men, even though same-sex marriage in France has not yet been legalised.
• 8 June – The pickled heart of Louis XVII is buried in the royal crypt at Saint-Denis.
• 13 June – European Parliament election in France.
• July – France released five of six suspects after their repatriation from Guantanamo Bay detainment camp.
• 26 September – Senate election held.
• 6 November – Clash between the armed forces of Côte d'Ivoire and French peacekeepers takes place.
• 14 December – The world's tallest bridge, the Millau bridge over the river Tarn in the Massif Central mountains, is opened by President Jacques Chirac
• 26 December – 95 French people are among thousands of people killed and 189 seriously injured by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

Arts and literature

• 31 October – Denoël in Paris publishes Irène Némirovsky's Suite française, consisting of two novellas, Tempête en juin and Dolce, written and set in 1940–1941, from a sequence left unfinished on the author's death in Auschwitz concentration camp in 1942.

Sport

• 3 July – Tour de France begins.
• 4 July – French Grand Prix won by Michael Schumacher of Germany.
• 25 July – Tour de France ends, won by Lance Armstrong of the United States.

Deaths

January to March

• 3 January – Pierre Flamion, soccer player and manager.
• 8 January – Franck Ténot, press agent, pataphysician and jazz critic.
• 15 January
• *Robert-Ambroise-Marie Carré, priest and author.
• *André Barrais, basketball player.
• 22 January – Ticky Holgado, actor.
• 13 February – François Tavenas, academic in Canada.
• 18 February – Jean Rouch, filmmaker and anthropologist.
• 21 February – Alex Métayer, comedian.
• 25 February – Jacques Georges, soccer administrator.
• 4 March – Claude Nougaro, singer and songwriter.
• 13 March – René Laloux, animator and film director.
• 28 March – Robert Merle, novelist.

April to June

• 25 April – Jacques Rouxel, animator.
• 28 April – Patrick Berhault, mountain climber.
• April – Daniel Bernard, diplomat.
• 1 May Jean-Jacques Laffont, economist.
• 2 May – Paul Guimard, writer.
• 28 May – Jean-Philippe Charbonnier, photographer.
• 29 May – Gérard de Sède, author.
• 31 May – Étienne Roda-Gil, songwriter and screenwriter.
• 10 June – Antoine Argoud, twice attempted to assassinate Charles de Gaulle.
• 11 June – Michel Roche, equestrian.
• 18 June – André Gillois, writer and radio pioneer.

July to September

• 9 July – Jean Lefebvre, actor.
• 17 July – Lucien Leduc, soccer player and manager.
• 18 July – Émile Peynaud, oenologist and researcher.
• 24 July – Claude Ballif, composer.
• 28 July – Bernard Saint-Hillier, General.
• 3 August – Henri Cartier-Bresson, photographer.
• 4 August – Cécile Guillame, first woman who engraved French postal stamps.
• 9 August – Robert Lecourt, jurist, fourth President of the European Court of Justice.
• 17 August – Gérard Souzay, baritone.
• 20 August – Amelie Delagrange, murder victim.
• 29 August – Jean-Louis Nicot, Air Force officer involved in the Algiers putsch.
• 8 September – Raymond Marcellin, politician.
• 9 September – Jean-Daniel Pollet, film director and screenwriter.
• 24 September – Françoise Sagan, playwright, novelist and screenwriter.
• 25 September – Alain Glavieux, professor in electrical engineering.
• 29 September – Richard Sainct, Rally Raid Motorcycle rider.

October to December

• October – Jacques Noël, fencer.
• 3 October – Jacques Benveniste, immunologist.
• 8 October – Jacques Derrida, philosopher.
• 22 October – Louis Bouyer, priest and writer.
• 27 October
• *Pierre Béarn, writer.
• *Claude Helffer, pianist.
• 26 November – Philippe de Broca, film director.
• 31 December – Gérard Debreu, economist and mathematician, won 1983 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics.