Now as to the price of books, maybe you don't know but french books cost on average less than american ones.
Citation needed.
And considering the US is a much larger market, a free market WHAT does that really tell you ?
It tells me nothing because even if what you claim is true (and you haven't proven that) there is insufficient information to draw conclusions regarding why that might be the case. Could be subsidies, could be exchange rates (the Euro is strong relative to the dollar and a lot of books are published in the US which would make them cheaper in Europe), could be some other structural advantage. No conclusions can be drawn without more information.
The French have a vibrant cultural market.
And yet we see the French constantly having to pass laws to "protect" their culture from the outside. I see McDonalds opening in France but I don't exactly see French bistros dotting the countryside of the US. The French should be justifiably proud of their culture and what it produces but sometimes they forget that sometimes people should decide for themselves what they want their culture to be.
Especially when it comes to books. They love books, they love reading, and they buy a lot of books. Much more on average than americans.
Again, citation needed but their supposed love of books has little to do with whether price supports should be used to subsidize small, inefficient bookstores. If French customers like the experience of browsing in such stores and are willing to pay more for the experience then such stores should have little difficulty surviving because they are not competing on price. But if they ARE competing on price then all this law does is subsidize a business that customers really aren't willing to pay for. Either way price floors are not a good idea.
Imagine a future were only Amazon or Apple can distribute/sell books. It would be a nightmare.
It is also a strawman argument. That is deeply unlikely to ever come to pass. The market will certainly change but change doesn't have to be bad. Right now you have a smallish number of large publishers who control the sale and price of most books. Amazon and others are taking the power and profits from the publishers but as an end consumer I'm simply trading one large oligopoly for another. What we really want is some way for readers to buy directly from authors without any middleman and in theory the internet provides a way to completely circumvent Amazon and publishers altogether when they don't provide extra value.