Constitution

President Emmanuel Macron has announced plans to hold a referendum in France on whether the issues of battling climate change and protection of the environment should be included in the country's constitution.

French MPs this week voted in favour of the government’s proposed reforms of France’s constitution, which include enshrining into fundamental law state of emergency powers and the stripping of French nationality from convicted terrorists. The highly controversial bill will next month be debated by the Senate, and must finally be presented to an extraordinary ‘Congress’ meeting of both houses. Mediapart editor François Bonnet argues here that the proposed reform of the constitution carries a triple menace that threatens the heart of French democracy, the future of the socialist party, and also President François Hollande's ambition to gain a second term of office.

If adopted definitively, the bill will enshrine state of emergency into France’s constitution and strip French nationality from convicted terrorists.

French lower house approves by a margin of 14 votes the measure to be written into the constitution and which has divided ruling socialist camp.

French President François Hollande on Wednesday told French parliament leaders that he will seek a third extension of state of emergency powers introduced immediately after the November 13th terrorist attacks in Paris which left 130 people dead. The announcement followed two separate and fiercely critical reports published this week, one by the government’s own official consultative committee on human rights which denounced "abuses" and the "devastating damage" of the special powers the government has granted itself, and another by a panel of United Nations rights experts who said the measure had created “excessive and disproportionate restrictions”. Jérôme Hourdeaux reports.

The move would bar legal challenges to search and detention powers and the stripping of French citizenship from dual nationals convicted of terrorism.

A ruling is expected next month over Dallas company's claim that ban on oil- and natural-gas-drilling technique of fracking violates the constitution.

When he was a candidate for the presidency, François Hollande promised to create a French system of government that would be beyond reproach. Earlier this week the president took his first steps to achieve that with the announcement of four laws to change the French Constitution. Yet there has been as much attention on the measures left out of the reforms as on what has been included. For example, there is no end to the president's immunity from prosecution while in office. Lénaïg Bredoux and Michel Deléan explain that the president has only backed those laws he is sure will get passed.

France's top judges have thrown out a move by animal rights campaigners to ban bullfighting on the grounds it contravenes the French constitution.

In a bid to help stamp out racism, Socialist Party presidential candidate François Hollande wants to make a small but significant amendment to article 1 of the French Constitution – the removal of the word “race”. But would that make any difference? Academic and human rights campaigner Danièle Lochak thinks not, dismissing the idea as merely “for show”. Here, in an interview with Mediapart's Carine Fouteau, she explains her reasoning.