The emblem

The French Republic also uses an emblem. It has been a symbol of France since 1912, although it does not have any legal status as an official coat of arms. It appears on the cover of French passports and was adopted originally by the French Foreign Ministry as a symbol for use by diplomatic and consular missions using a design by the sculptor Jules-Clément Chaplain.

It consists of:

1. A wide shield with, on the one end, a lion-head and on the other an eagle-head, bearing a monogram "RF" standing for République Française (French Republic).
2. An olive branch symbolises peace.
3. An oak branch symbolises perennity or wisdom.
4. The fasces, a symbol associated with the exercise of justice (the bundle of rods and an axe were carried by Roman lictors); this use of the fasces predates the adoption of this symbol by Benito Mussolini as the emblem of Italian Fascism.