France Reopens the Constitutional Debate

Less than six years have passed since the Constitution of the Fourth Republic was put into operation, yet every political group in France with the exception of the Communist Party, which has its own special plans for France's future, is currently participating in a movement for constitutional revision. Since July, 1950, no candidate for the post of Prime Minister has neglected to assert in his ministerial declaration the need for constitutional reform. The parties of the Third Force majority of the first legislature of the Fourth Republic set into motion for the first time, in November, 1950, the machinery for the amendment of the Constitution. The momentum which the revisionist movement had already gathered was given greater impetus by the elections of June, 1951, which reinforced markedly the political groups opposed to the Constitution at its inception. These groups had been able to muster only 106 votes in the Second Constituent Assembly of 1946. Later, in the first legislature but after the formation of a Gaullist parliamentary group, their strength rose to approximately 160 seats. And as a result of the elections of June, 1951, the same groups now command 300 seats in the second legislature.