French presidential elections under the Fifth Republic May. 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
Constitutional amendments under the French Fifth Republic beginning of the French Fifth Republic, revisions have been adopted without using section 89. Unless otherwise stated, the provisions of the constitutional laws come into force on the date of enactment. However, some recent constitutional laws have provided a delayed effective date. The material content of the Constitution, in these cases, changes on different dates from those of other enactments of constitutional laws. For example, the constitution act of 23 July 2008 provides in article 46 that some sections of the reform are effective on and others "under the conditions established by law and necessary for their implementing organic laws"