French presidential elections under the Fifth Republic French presidential elections under the Fifth Republic There have been eleven presidential elections in France since the establishment of the Fifth Republic in 1958. Originally the president was elected by the Collège des Notables (an assembly of "notable electors") that included around 80,000 county and city/town councillors (who had been elected locally). Following the 1962 de Gaulle's constitutional reform (the constitutional Act of November 6, 1962) the president has been directly elected by the people of France. Until the French constitutional revision of September 24, 2000, the president had been elected for a seven-year term. Under this revision the term
Constitutional amendments under the French Fifth Republic matching the term of office of the President with the Deputies. Indeed, when the parliamentary majority did not support the President, he would be forced to appoint a hostile prime minister as a minister of his party and would be likely be reversed by the National Assembly. The Constitution includes in its preamble, since , an of 10 articles, at the request of President of the Republic Jacques Chirac. For the subsequent ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon, a revision of Title XV of the Constitution was passed by Congress on February 4, 2008, by 560 votes against 181. The