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 Constitutional amendments under the French Fifth Republic In France, the French constitution of 4 October 1958 was revised many times in its early years. Changes in this fundamental law have become more frequent since the 1990s. This has had two major causes: the desire to modernize public institutions on one hand, and adapting to the European Union and to international law on the other. The revision of the Constitution under Article 89 of the Constitution: In its current form, article 89 and state that ""the plenary discussion of the draft constitutional amendment ... carries, on first reading to the first