jmc

To begin, consider the number of ways to arrange the three countries around the circle. We can consider the English representatives a block, the Germans another block, and the French a third block. There are $(3-1)!=2$ ways to arrange these three blocks around a circle. We can also see this by simply drawing the two possible arrangements: Within the English group, there are $3!=6$ ways to arrange the three representatives. Similarly, there are $4!$ ways to arrange the Germans and $2!$ ways to arrange the French representatives. Overall, the total number of ways to seat the 9 representatives is: $$2!\times 3!\times 4!\times 2!=2\times 6\times 24\times 2=\boxed{576}$$