A shrunken Africa, a Greenland and a northern Russia that seem to stretch into infinity: that is about to disappear from the maps used by French diplomacy.
Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot announced on Friday that his department is abandoning the so-called Mercator projection, which artificially enlarges polar regions and visually downplays the size of equatorial areas. France will now use instead the Eckert IV projection, which reflects the true proportions of the continents more accurately.
