In a welcome victory for Sarkozy, France radically improves constitution

French President Nicolas Sarkozy enjoyed a big victory today when a special session of both houses of the French parliament voted in favor of a radical and very positive overhaul of the French Constitution. Described as the most sweeping change in half a century, the new constitutional provisions:

- limit the president to serving two terms;
- limit the ability of the president to govern by decree;
- introduce greater parliamentary oversight over presidential appointments;
- introduce greater parliamentary control over presidential emergency powers;
- require parliament to be informed about any overseas deployment of troops, and allows parliament to veto any such deployment if it lasts more than 4 months;
- introduce an ombudsman to deal with complaints about citizen interactions with the French administration; and
- allow the president in the future to directly address parliament.

In the Dutch press, it was further reported that French citizens living abroad will enjoy better representation and that, in the future, criminal defendants can directly challenge the constitutionality of a law that they allegedly violated.

The provision allowing the president to directly address parliament was the most controversial revision, and the constitutional reforms ultimately passed by a single vote (538 votes were needed, and 539 members of parliament voted in favor). With the exception of former minister Jack Lang, the Socialist Party voted against the proposed reforms because they did not go far enough. Apparently not realizing that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, the Socialist Party's spokesman explained his party's opposition as follows: "[t]his text does not contain the counterweights, the guarantees which would allow us to avoid the risk of a concentration of powers, what we call a monocracy."