2010 redistricting of French legislative constituencies

[2] The 2010 redistricting process not only brought down the rule of two deputies per department to one, it also created eleven constituencies for French residents overseas.

A review of electoral boundaries will be conducted, based on demographic changes, after the second general census of the population following the previous border definition.

The Council found disparities in representation resulting from the boundaries that were adopted in 1986 on the basis of population figures from the census of 1982.

[3] However, the successive governments of Lionel Jospin, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, Dominique de Villepin and François Fillon did not alter electoral boundaries, despite the legal requirement of Law No.

Thus, even the French legislative elections of 2007 used conscriptions defined based on the results of the 1982 census and had not incorporated the changes in population occurring in the intervening 25 years.

In March 2005, Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin formed a working group in order to assess the legal impact carrying out a redistricting of legislative districts and townships and to define a method that whereby any redistricting would be conducted in compliance with three legal requirements of "neutrality, transparency and fairness.

In fact, the former president of the Constitutional Council, Pierre Mazeaud, even threatened to void the elections results of the constituencies that would be changed.

The report proposed maintaining the number of constituencies at 577, but this time select a target maximum of 10% deviation in population in relation to the departmental average.

)[5] In July 2008, the government launched the formal effort to redistrict the constituencies, with Prime Minister François Fillon consulting the representatives of political parties in Parliament, and presented a bill to the Cabinet on September 24.