In terms of area, it is the second smallest of the eleven constituencies (after the sixth: Switzerland and Liechtenstein), covering the three Benelux countries: Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.

In contrast, it is the second most populous (after the first: United States and Canada): as of New Year's Day 2011, it contained 150,965 registered French voters.

The bulk of these, 101,236, were living in Belgium, the country with the fifth greatest number of registered French residents in the world.

[7] When Andréani became France's permanent representative to the OECD, the party named Marie-Anne Montchamp, the then-Secretary of State on Solidarity, as candidate in her place.

[11] The Left Front, which included the French Communist Party, chose Charlotte Balavoine, with Patrick Cavaglieri as her deputy (suppléant).

[6] Solidarity and Progress, the French branch of the LaRouche movement, was represented by Guillaume Dubost, a 32-year-old electrical engineer and long-term resident of Brussels.

[7] He eventually became the candidate of the centre-right Radical Party and the centrist Republican, Ecologist and Social Alliance.

A resident of Brussels, she described herself officially as the candidate of the Union of the Centre and the Right of the French in Benelux.

[16][17] Georges-Francis Seingry, a resident of Brussels who described himself as non-partisan, stood for the Gathering of French Residents Overseas (Rassemblement des Français de l'étranger), a political movement related to the Union for a Popular Movement.