The French provide an "information du vol" service that is more akin to the US flight-following, where handovers are more coordinated and aircraft are assigned a discrete squawk.
This is unusual to pilots who mainly fly in UK airspace who are probably anxious if they haven't got a transit clearance 5-10 minutes before they reach a zone boundary.
In the UK, you would normally dump a 'basic' FIS when approaching controlled airspace and not enter until you hear the words 'cleared to enter....' from the control unit of that airspace.