Plus, they'd have to learn french also. France is not very accommodating to non French speaking foreigners. Trying to get around in life with just English there outside of Paris is not easy.
I don't really get this kind of comments... Usually people also say the same thing when visiting Japan. "This restaurant only has menu in Japanese and staff only speaking Japanese!!".
That's true a bit everywhere in the world, isn't it? In the US, apart from places with say huge Spanish speaking presence, you better interact in English.
Try "getting around in life" using only say French, or Portuguese, or Japanese in a random US city like Portland, NYC, or Chicago.
No it's not, western Europe for example has a bunch of countries where English is almost as good as native. But obviously that's not the common case across the world, and like you say there's nothing wrong with expecting people to know the local language.
That has not been my experience. I'm not arguing it should be this way, but for better or worse I've gotten by very well with english virtually anywhere with tourists and most places without. I lived in east ukraine for two years and learned russian - enough people spoke english there that at times it could be hard to get practice time in russian. This was with a younger student crowd, most non-students and older people did not speak english, but the point stands that you can find english speaking people and get by in most situations.