Not true. France does have an Intelligence Committee ("Délégation parlementaire au renseignement"). And there is a control organism like the FISA Courts ("Commission nationale de contrôle des interceptions de sécurité"); while legally their decisions are only consultative, in practice the government almost always respects them. And it denies between 1% and 2% of requests, whereas the FISA only denies 0.03%.
However I'm no expert, so I can't say how much power or independance they actually have.
You can read their annual reports (in French):
http://www.ladocumentationfrancaise.fr/rapports-publics/1440... http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/connaissance/delegation_re...
EDIT: No offense, peterwwillis, but I tend to take arguments such as those from Americans with a grain of salt. Americans like to think that they are better than those nasty commies, but history says otherwise, what with the CIA transporting cocaine and overthrowing foreign governments, and the nsa actively carrying out MITM attacks.
But qualitative statements are of literally no value. It's all gut instinct. Of course you'd like to think that the US can take moral high ground over the Chinese.
What we're discussing is the subjective perception of both agencies. NSA has most of their programs exposed, as opposed to the PLA, and yet the public still gives NSA the benefit of the doubt. Now that's what I call freedom.
Neither citizenry has any meaningful control over "their" spy agencies. They're not your favourite sports team that you need to defend. If you harbour any illusions of democratic control: the elected class is a lot smaller and a few degrees more stable than the candidate pool. Before they get access to power, candidates tend to renounce any action against the NSA.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2008/jul/14/...