This article continues a series.
After Macron described a power that concentrates itself and seeks to outlive its founder.1
France: A Debt Crisis, or a Crisis of Sovereignty?2 showed decisions committing the country being taken without the French being consulted. Who Is Harnessing France’s Anger?3 concluded that a voice had to be given back to those who demonstrate, somewhere other than in the street. It remains to say how to go about it.
The five reforms that follow are not an adjustment of the current regime: they are the condition of its refoundation. For a genuine refoundation will no longer be decreed from above. It belongs to the people, and to them alone. They must still have the means to decide it. Each reform is grounded in an assessment, in foreign precedents and in a fair examination of the objections to it. The final part sketches the horizon they open: an organic State, ordered to the common good.
The prerequisite: by what route should reform proceed?
The question is topical. Several presidential candidates intend to use the referendum to get round institutional deadlock. Marine Le Pen proposes to put to the French, through Article 11, the ‘citizenship–identity–immigration’ constitutional revision tabled by her group in January 2024. In September, Ms Le Pen confirmed that she wants a referendum on a bill against Islamist ideology.4 François Asselineau, the candidate of the Union populaire républicaine, for his part advocates a ‘triple liberation’: leaving the euro, NATO and the European Union, the latter through the activation of Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union. In the name of the sovereignty of the people, he also proposes recognition of the blank vote, a citizens’ initiative referendum and ‘major referendums’ on immigration, debt and nuclear power.5 Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the candidate of La France insoumise, proposes to convene, by a referendum based on Article 11, a Constituent Assembly tasked with drafting the Constitution of a Sixth Republic, and to introduce a citizens’ initiative referendum allowing citizens to propose or repeal a law, amend the Constitution and recall elected officials.6 Bruno Retailleau proposes that, within a year of a ruling by the Constitutional Council striking down a provision, the President of the Republic should be able to ask the people or Parliament sitting as Congress for authorisation to promulgate it, the people being in his view ‘the only supreme court’. 7
The President of the Constitutional Council, Richard Ferrand, has answered them. In an interview published on 31 July, he described the Council’s mission as ‘clear and simple: to ensure respect for our Constitution, full respect for our Constitution’. He recalled that its members are ‘neither legislators nor constitution-makers’ and that ‘constitutional change is possible if the French people and their representatives want it’.8 On 10 October, he warned those who would turn the referendum into a weapon against the rule of law, recalling that, to revise the Constitution, ‘Article 89 is the only route’.9
The debate is not new. In 1962, General de Gaulle had the election of the President of the Republic by universal suffrage adopted by referendum under Article 11, against the opinion of the Conseil d’État and of most lawyers. The Constitutional Council then declared that it had no jurisdiction to review a law adopted by the people, ‘the direct expression of national sovereignty’.10 That law is still in force: the 2027 presidential election will rest on it. Nor has the Article 11 route been closed. On 6 November 2025, the Senate rejected a constitutional bill whose very purpose was to confine any revision to Article 89, and the report of its Law Committee conceded that such a text would have been no more than a ‘paper barrier’.11 A future president could therefore resort to it. Once the people have spoken, no court could undo their decision.
It should be noted that, since 2000, the Constitutional Council has considered itself competent to review, before the vote, the decree convening the electorate.12 Some legal scholars infer that it could, on that occasion, block a revision under Article 11, at the cost of a major institutional crisis. Others dispute this.13 It would be a conflict of legitimacies between the judge and the sovereign people. The Council itself settled it in 1962 in favour of the latter.
Two routes therefore exist, and the reforms that follow can take either. The first is Article 11: the President of the Republic puts the text directly to the people, on a proposal from the government or from both houses of Parliament. The second, less well known, is Article 89. When a revision originates with members of Parliament, that is, when it takes the form of a constitutional bill tabled by them, it must, after being passed in identical terms by both houses, be approved by referendum. Only government bills may be submitted to Parliament sitting as Congress.14 The difficulty is real, since both houses must agree on the text, but this route cannot be contested.
One last criterion guides these proposals. Montesquieu formulated it nearly three centuries ago: ‘so that one cannot abuse power, power must check power by the arrangement of things’.15 Each reform has therefore been put to a simple test: would this rule be dangerous in the hands of the government one most distrusts? None of those that follow increases the power of those who govern.
First reform: a referendum lock
The problem. On 29 May 2005, 54.67 per cent of voters rejected the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe. On 4 February 2008, Parliament, meeting as Congress, revised the Constitution to allow ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon, which took over most of its substance.16 The procedure was lawful. Yet the lesson many French people drew from it has lasted: their vote can be circumvented. No national referendum has been held since. The Constitution already contains a lock, but it works in one direction only. When a shared initiative referendum proposal is rejected by the people, no new proposal on the same subject may be submitted for two years.17 Citizens are thus bound to respect the verdict of the ballot box, which is not the case for those who govern.
The proposal. It consists of two rules. First, when a text has been rejected by referendum, no provision with the same purpose could be adopted for five years other than by a new referendum. The Constitutional Council, referred to by sixty deputies or sixty senators, would verify whether the purpose is the same, as it already does for the shared-initiative referendum. Second, any treaty transferring new powers to the European Union would be ratified by referendum. Article 88-5 already provides for a referendum on the accession of a new State to the Union, but allows Parliament to set it aside by a three-fifths vote of each house.18 This loophole would be removed, which would directly concern, for example, the accession of Ukraine. François Asselineau already proposed in 2022 to require a referendum for any revision of the Constitution and to prohibit transfers of sovereignty that are not strictly limited.19
The precedent. Since its Supreme Court’s Crotty judgment in 1987, Ireland has put to referendum the European treaties that affect its Constitution. On 12 June 2008, 53.4 per cent of Irish voters rejected the Treaty of Lisbon. The Union then gave Ireland legal guarantees on its neutrality, its taxation and the retention of its commissioner. Following these guarantees, the treaty was approved on 2 October 2009 by 67.1 per cent of the vote.20
The objection. Such a lock would make European negotiations more rigid, when twenty seven States must agree. The Irish example shows the opposite: the ‘no’ forced a renegotiation, and the second vote was legitimate because the text put to voters had changed. The proposed lock does not, moreover, prevent going back to the people. It only prevents others from deciding in their place.
Second reform: a workable citizens’ initiative referendum
The problem. The shared-initiative referendum, created in 2008 and applicable since 2015, requires the support of one fifth of members of Parliament, that is, 185 deputies and senators, and then of one tenth of registered voters, nearly 4.8 million people.21 It is moreover enough for each house to ‘examine’ the text within six months for the referendum not to take place, and it cannot target a law promulgated less than a year earlier. In ten years, it has never succeeded. The proposal on Aéroports de Paris gathered 1,093,030 signatures, when 4,717,396 were needed.22 In 2023, the two requests concerning the pension reform were rejected by the Constitutional Council.23
The proposal. Open a purely citizen-led route, without the prior requirement of 185 members of Parliament. Set the threshold at one million signatures, about 2 per cent of the electorate, a figure put forward by the President of the Republic himself in 2019.24 Avoid the referendum only if Parliament adopts the text, and no longer if it merely examines it. Finally, allow a recently promulgated law to be put to the people, within a short period and with a lower threshold, on the Swiss model. Review by the Constitutional Council would be maintained before signatures are collected: it guarantees that no initiative can infringe fundamental rights. François Asselineau and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, moreover, each include the citizens’ initiative referendum in their programme in their own way.25
The precedents. In Switzerland, 50,000 signatures collected within a hundred days are enough to put a law passed by Parliament to the people, and 100,000 within eighteen months to propose a revision of the Constitution.26 In Italy, 500,000 voters can request the repeal of a law, but the result is valid only if half of registered voters have voted. In June 2025, a referendum on naturalisation and labour law thus failed, with turnout of around 30 per cent, after members of the government had called for abstention.27 The lesson is clear: a turnout quorum rewards those who boycott the vote. If a threshold is deemed necessary, it would be better to require the ‘yes’ vote to reach a minimum share of registered voters.
The objection. The referendum would open the door to demagoguery and threaten minorities. Prior review by the Constitutional Council answers this concern, and Swiss experience shows that a people consulted several times a year votes neither erratically nor against its own institutions. Nor does the cost argument hold: the public platform for collecting signatures already exists.
Third reform: a budget that is always voted
The problem. Under Article 47 of the Constitution, if Parliament has not reached a decision on the budget within seventy days, its provisions may be brought into force by ordinance. For the 2027 budget, this deadline expires at midnight on 17 December 2026.28 The procedure has never been used under the Fifth Republic. The constitutional lawyer Benjamin Morel calls it an ‘atomic bomb’.29 It would make it possible to impose an entire budget, taxes included, without a single member of Parliament having approved it. Consent to taxation, which the Estates General claimed long before the Revolution and which Article 14 of the 1789 Declaration took up, would then be emptied of its substance.30
The Senate has grasped the risk. A constitutional bill tabled in December 2025 seeks to regulate these ordinances, by limiting them to the text originally tabled by the government, and to consolidate the ‘special law’ which, as in December 2024, allows taxes to continue to be collected in the absence of a budget.31 This is progress, but the ordinance remains.
The proposal. Abolish the bringing into force of the budget by ordinance. In the absence of a vote, the previous year’s budget would be provisionally renewed, with authorisation to borrow only to the extent strictly necessary to repay existing debt, until Parliament adopts a new budget.
The precedent. This is the German solution. Article 111 of the Basic Law provides that, in the absence of an adopted budget, the government may incur only the expenditure needed to keep institutions running, to meet legal obligations and to continue projects already approved.32
The objection. Renewal would freeze the country and prevent necessary savings. Yet that is the price of consent: a government that wants to reform must convince a majority. Deadlock is not a failure of democracy: it is sometimes its expression. The broader question of Article 49, paragraph 3, would deserve a study of its own.
Fourth reform: debt by consent
The problem. Public debt rose from 22 per cent of GDP at the end of 1981 to nearly 116 per cent at the end of 2025. It reached 119 per cent at the end of the first half of 2026.33 Parliament does indeed vote a ceiling every year. But it is only the ceiling on the net change in the State’s negotiable debt of more than one year, buried in the balance article of the finance act among dozens of figures. This ceiling ignores the debt of social security and of local authorities.34 Consent therefore exists in form but not in substance. As for European rules, the 2012 Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance, ratified without a referendum, and the organic ‘golden rule’ that accompanied it have not prevented the drift.35
The proposal. It has two parts. First, an annual, separate and solemn vote of Parliament on the borrowing requirement and the debt trajectory of all public administrations, carried by a majority of the members of each house rather than of votes cast. Second, a constitutional rule of structural balance, assessed over the whole economic cycle and accompanied by an escape clause voted by a three-fifths majority in the event of war, pandemic or serious crisis. This rule would be adopted by referendum, to give it the authority that no treaty has conferred on it. Marine Le Pen proposed, on 6 October, a ‘golden rule’ put to referendum, and François Asselineau a ‘major referendum’ on debt:36 convergence is possible across political divides.37
The precedents. Switzerland enshrined a debt brake in its Constitution by a popular vote on 2 December 2001, approved by 84.7 per cent of voters.38 Germany adopted its own in 2009, limiting the federal structural deficit to 0.35 per cent of GDP, then reformed it on 18 March 2025, by a two-thirds majority, to exclude part of defence spending and create a 500 billion euro infrastructure fund.39
The objection. An overly rigid rule stifles investment, and the German relaxation of 2025 proves it. That is why the proposed rule is assessed over the cycle and includes an escape clause. Above all, a rule chosen by the people can be changed by them, whereas a rule imposed by treaty does not allow this.
Fifth reform: an open presidential election
The problem. To stand in the presidential election, a candidate must gather 500 sponsorships from some 42,000 elected officials, from at least thirty departments or overseas authorities, with no more than one tenth coming from the same department. Since 2016, the names of all sponsors have been made public, which exposes mayors to pressure.40 At every election, candidates polling several points struggle to gather these signatures. The people’s choice is thus filtered, before the first round, by a fraction of their representatives.
The proposal. Open an alternative route of citizen sponsorship: 150,000 voters’ signatures, spread across at least fifty departments, with no department providing more than 7,500. This was the proposal made in 2012 by the commission chaired by Lionel Jospin.41 The two routes would coexist, and either would suffice.
The objection. The number of candidates would multiply. But 150,000 verified signatures is a demanding threshold, comparable to the first-round score of the least supported candidates. Collection could rely on the public platform already used for the shared-initiative referendum.
The limits of these reforms
Taken by themselves, these proposals create neither a recall referendum nor a binding mandate: Article 27 of the Constitution, under which ‘any binding mandate shall be null and void’, would remain. They do not abolish constitutional review, which would take place before signatures are collected and before any vote. They call into question neither Parliament, which retains the initiative and the vote of laws, nor France’s international commitments, which would continue to be ratified in accordance with constitutional rules.
Above all, they settle no substantive question. They do not say whether there should be more or less immigration, more or less Europe, more or less public spending. They say only who, in the last resort, decides. That is what allows voters of all persuasions to support them, and candidates from all sides to take them up.
Beyond the reforms: refounding the State These reforms are neutral by design, and therein lies their strength. The refoundation they make possible is of another nature: it is a proposal, put to the people, and it will be for them alone to decide. The French malaise is indeed older than the Fifth Republic. Ever since the Le Chapelier law abolished intermediate bodies in 1791, on the grounds that ‘no one is permitted to inspire in citizens an intermediate interest’, the individual has stood alone before power.42 The aim is to refound the State on organic foundations: an order in which the family, the municipality, the trade and the region exercise in their own right what they are able to take on, the higher level intervening only to help, in the service of the common good. Such a refoundation cannot be decreed from above, nor will it happen all at once.
The base will have to be rebuilt, communities given real powers, and then a representation of their own. The reforms above are its first step: they give the people back the power to decide on their institutions. The following steps are the subject of a separate analysis.43
Conclusion
The President of the Constitutional Council said it himself: constitutional change is possible ‘if the French people and their representatives want it’. Each of these reforms can be taken up on its own. Together, they could be put to the French in a single referendum, whether the next president chooses the Article 11 route or a revision initiated by members of Parliament follows that of Article 89. Article 3 of the Constitution provides that ‘national sovereignty belongs to the people, who exercise it through their representatives and by means of referendum’.44
It remains to give the latter the means to exist, so that the people may one day decide not only their laws, but the very form of the State they wish to give themselves.
References:
1 Virginie de Araújo-Recchia, ‘After Macron: What Will Survive Beyond 2027’, 17 September 2026.
2 Virginie de Araújo-Recchia, ‘France: A Debt Crisis, or a Crisis of Sovereignty?’, Sovereignty, 12 October 2026.
3 Virginie de Araújo-Recchia, ‘Who Is Harnessing France’s Anger?’, October 2026.
4 Constitutional bill on ‘citizenship–identity–immigration’ tabled in the National Assembly in January 2024; ‘Immigration : comment une proposition de loi des sénateurs PS tente de déjouer les plans de Marine Le Pen’, Public Sénat, 16 May 2025; ‘Interdiction du voile : en envisageant la piste d’un référendum, Marine Le Pen met la pression sur le Conseil constitutionnel’, Public Sénat, 16 July 2026; remarks on LCI on 16 September 2026, reported by Le Monde.
5 Union populaire républicaine, upr.fr, accessed 22 October 2026 (programme for 2027 being drawn up); programme presented by Votons 2027 (candidacy declared on 21 March 2026); ‘Présidentielle 2027 : qui sont les candidats déclarés ?’, Sud Radio, 20 July 2026.
6 Programme of Jean-Luc Mélenchon for 2027, ‘Institutions’, presented by Votons 2027 based on melenchon2027.fr, accessed 22 October 2026.
7 Interview with Bruno Retaillea in Le Figaro, 2 September 2026, reported by Le Monde; ‘Un référendum peut-il renverser une décision du Conseil constitutionnel ?’, Kohen Avocats, 10 October 2026.
8 Interview with Richard Ferrand by Baptiste Legrand, Ouest-France, 31 July 2026, reported by Breizh-Info, 12 August 2026.
9 ‘Richard Ferrand met en garde ceux qui, comme Marine Le Pen ou Bruno Retailleau, aimeraient faire du référendum une arme contre l’État de droit’, BFMTV, 10 October 2026 (interview on the Quid Juris podcast of the Club des juristes); ‘‘Un référendum peut-il renverser une décision du Conseil constitutionnel ?’, Kohen Avocats, 10 October 2026.
10 Constitutional Council, decision no. 62-20 DC of 6 November 1962, Loi relative à l’élection du Président de la République au suffrage universel direct, adoptée par le référendum du 28 octobre 1962.
11 Senate, constitutional bill no. 551 (2024–2025) to protect the Constitution by limiting its revision to the Article 89 route, introduced by Éric Kerrouche, rejected in plenary on 6 November 2025; Lauriane Josende, report no. 91 (2025–2026) on behalf of the Law Committee, 29 October 2025.
12 Constitutional Council, decision of 25 July 2000, Hauchemaille; ‘Interdiction du voile : en envisageant la piste d’un référendum, Marine Le Pen met la pression sur le Conseil constitutionnel’, Public Sénat, 16 July 2026.
13 Éric Landot, ‘Réforme de la Constitution : art. 11, devoir de réserve… petits rappels de quelques évidences sur la polémique du jour’, Blog Landot & associés, 15 and 18 October 2026; Lauriane Josende, report no. 91 (2025–2026), cited above, which notes that scholarly opinion remains divided.
14 Constitution of 4 October 1958, Article 89, paragraphs 2 and 3; see also the remarks of Benjamin Morel reported in ‘Immigration : comment une proposition de loi des sénateurs PS tente de déjouer les plans de Marine Le Pen’, Public Sénat, 16 May 2025.
15 Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, 1748, Book XI, chapter 4
16 Proclamation of the results of the referendum of 29 May 2005 by the Constitutional Council; Constitutional Law no. 2008 103 of 4 February 2008 amending Title XV of the Constitution.
17 Constitution of 4 October 1958, Article 11, paragraph 6.
18 Constitution of 4 October 1958, Article 88-5.
19 Union populaire républicaine, ‘Mes 27 + 1 engagements’, 2022 presidential programme, commitment no. 13. 20 Supreme Court of Ireland, Crotty v. An Taoiseach, 1987; official results of the referendums of 12 June 2008 and 2 October 2009; conclusions of the European Council of 11 and 12 December 2008.
21 Constitution of 4 October 1958, Article 11, paragraphs 3 to 6; Organic Law no. 2013-1114 of 6 December 2013 implementing Article 11 of the Constitution; ‘Comment fonctionne le référendum d’initiative partagée ?’, Public Sénat, 31 March 2023.
22 Constitutional Council, decision no. 2019-1-8 RIP of 26 March 2020; ‘ADP : que le RIP repose en paix…’, Blog Landot & associés, 27 March 2020.
23 ‘Retraites : le Conseil constitutionnel rejette la deuxième demande de référendum d’initiative partagée’, LCP, 3 May 2023.
24 ‘Jugé inapplicable, le référendum d’initiative partagée peut-il être réformé ?’, Public Sénat, 5 October 2023.
25 Union populaire républicaine, ‘Mes 27 + 1 engagements’, 2022 presidential programme, commitment no. 13, and upr.fr, cited above; programme of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, cited above.
26 Federal Constitution of the Swiss Confederation, Articles 138, 139 and 141; ‘Référendum budgétaire : l’exemple des votations suisses’, IFRAP, 26 May 2025.
27 Constitution of the Italian Republic, Article 75; ‘Échec d’un référendum en Italie sur la naturalisation et le droit du travail’, La Télé, 9 June 2025.
28 Constitution of 4 October 1958, Article 47, paragraph 3; National Assembly, ‘Organisation de l’examen du projet de loi de finances pour 2027’, October 2026.
29 ‘L’hypothèse d’un budget par ordonnance toujours sur la table : “une bombe atomique démocratique”’, Public Sénat, 12 January 2026.
30 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 26 August 1789, Article 14: ‘All citizens have the right to ascertain, by themselves or through their representatives, the need for a public contribution, to consent to it freely […]’.
31 Senate, constitutional bill no. 242 (2025–2026) to clarify the procedure for examining budget texts, tabled on 18 December 2025 by Élisabeth Doineau, L’essentiel, February 2026.
32 Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, Article 111.
33 Insee, annual national accounts; Insee, Dette trimestrielle de Maastricht des administrations publiques, second quarter of 2026 (119.0 per cent of GDP).
34 Organic Law no. 2001-692 of 1 August 2001 on finance acts, Article 34, I, 9°; for example, this ceiling was set at 125.5 billion euros for 2023: Senate, report no. 113 (2023–2024) on the 2023 end-of-year finance bill, Article 4.
35 Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union, signed on 2 March 2012; Law no. 2012-1171 of 22 October 2012 authorising its ratification; Organic Law no. 2012-1403 of 17 December 2012 on the programming and governance of public finances.
36 Union populaire républicaine, upr.fr, cited above.
37 ‘“140 milliards” d’économies : ce qu’il faut retenir de l’intervention de Marine Le Pen’, AFP, reported by La Gazette France, 6 October 2026.
38 Federal Constitution of the Swiss Confederation, Article 126; ‘Référendum budgétaire : l’exemple des votations suisses’, IFRAP, 26 May 2025.
39 Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, Articles 109 and 115; ‘Allemagne : le Bundestag donne son feu vert à une réforme du frein à l’endettement’, Reuters, reported by Boursorama, 18 March 2025.
40 Law no. 62-1292 of 6 November 1962 on the election of the President of the Republic by universal suffrage, Article 3; Organic Law no. 2016-506 of 25 April 2016 modernising the rules applicable to the presidential election.
41 Commission on the Renewal and Ethics of Public Life, Pour un renouveau démocratique, November 2012; ‘Élection présidentielle : parrainer est-ce soutenir ?’, Actu-Juridique, 28 February 2022.
42 Law of 14 and 17 June 1791 on assemblies of workers and artisans of the same trade and profession, known as the Le Chapelier law; Isaac Le Chapelier, report to the National Constituent Assembly, sitting of 14 June 1791
43 Virginie de Araújo-Recchia, ‘Refounding the State. From the Centralised Republic to an Organic Order: A Transition in Stages’, forthcoming.
44 Constitution of 4 October 1958, Article 3, paragraph 1.
