The answer is one of doctrine

through most of the second world war, the primary combat weapon for an infantry soldier in almost all armies was a bolt action rifle, in most cases supplemented by a squad/platoon level machine gun section (this varied drastically from formation to formation of course)

the idea was to have the "squad" MG as a suppression weapon to allow for the infantry to maneuver from a fixed anchor point (or two, for example german schewere panzergrenadier formations sometimes had two MG42s at the squad level), this doctrine was largely common to the European combatants, and i believe the french followed along, as they used the Lebel in conjunction with the FM 24/29 (and Brens, and chauchats, and anything they could dig up towards the end..)

for the soviets it was the the Mosin–Nagant 91/30 with a DP mg

for the british it was the Lee-Enfield MK4 with the Bren

for the germans it was the Kar 98k with the MG42 (the GW43 not being issued until 43, and never eclipsing the Kar98 except in mountain and as i recall falshimjaeger units)

for the italians it was largely the Carcano M91/41 with a number of Breda Mgs

only the americans used an "automatic rifle" doctrine, where the Garand was a standard rifle, and the BAR supplemented it (the BAR most definitely not being a full MG), only Armored rifle and Airborne platoons tended to have incorporated light 30cal Mgs. the automatic rifles provided each infantry soldier more individual firepower, and a better individual capability to offer suppression fire, at the cost of not having a lynch-pin squad level MG. (it mostly worked... but like most ww2 american doctrine, it had its major drawbacks... See tank destroyers....)

the automatic rifle was the anomaly, not the standard.

the other side to it is production, as the war dragged on, most combatants started to add more and more automatic rifles into the mix, the SVT rifle became more common, the gw43, etc, but these weapons were in general more complicated to produce, and in most cases, a greater number of bolt-action rifles were preferable, except in the US where production of Garands was sufficient as to not require "dropping down" to a bolt action rifle.

and last, well, frankly, the french military establishment after ww1 was a clusterfuck.. between the maginot line, balkanized weapons production, and scandal after scandal, modernization programs were a very stop and go affair, with semi- automatic rifles inevitably being a victim here.. i still really like "to lose a battle" by Alistair Horne for insightinto the french military pre-ww2

http://www.amazon.com/To-Lose-Battle-France-1940/dp/0141030658

Edits: formatting and spelling