"The Constitution offers tools for democratic breathing space that it seems appropriate to activate to get out of the current impasse."

September 8th is shaping up to be a parliamentary aftershock of June 9, 2024, the day Emmanuel Macron announced the dissolution of the National Assembly, as it seems unlikely that even a relative majority will give its confidence to the government led by François Bayrou. This heralds a new institutional earthquake initiated by the executive itself, which risks plunging France further into the spiral of crises it is experiencing.

Until now, the institutions of the ^Fifth Republic have held firm, at the considerable cost of massive use of constitutional mechanisms intended to remedy occasional – and not long-term – episodes of crisis, in particular that provided for by Article 49, paragraph 3, of the Constitution.

While all these constitutional strings can theoretically still be used until May 2027, they appear worn out, anachronistic, even dangerous, in that they only increase the latent democratic malaise. In the absence of a "German-style" culture of compromise, the national political configuration seems frozen in postures that make the country difficult to govern. At the same time, an aggiornamento constitutional is unthinkable in the short term.

Furthermore, and despite the promises made over almost eight years in power, the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister have been unable to introduce proportional representation for the election to the National Assembly, contributing to the discrediting of public discourse through their inertia and the discord between words and actions.

Fortunately, in its plasticity, the 1958 Constitution offers at least three tools for democratic breathing which it now seems appropriate to activate, in whole or in part, in an attempt to escape the current impasse.

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