Article 49 of the French Constitution

[a] Its best-known provision, paragraph 3 (Article 49.3), allows the government to force passage of a law without a vote, unless the parliament passes a motion of no confidence.

Such a motion requires an absolute majority of members to vote for its adoption, and thus this provision changes the burden of proof and forces the Assembléé Nationale to reject the entire administration.

This paragraph of Article 49 has only come into play once, in 1962 against Georges Pompidou, who then had to resign, but returned to power with newfound support after winning a decisive majority in the ensuing legislative elections.

This clause shifts the burden of proof and compels the Assembléé Nationale to reject the whole administration because such a resolution needs the support of an absolute majority of members in order to be adopted.

Only once, in 1962, has this clause of Article 49 been invoked against Georges Pompidou, who was forced to step down but later regained power after securing a resounding majority in the subsequent legislative elections.

Section 49 was mentioned in a brief passage that set out its spirit and motivations: "The difficult procedure for a motion of no confidence must temper the defect that we know well, and for too long.

In such an extreme case, the president, responsible for ensuring the continuity of the state, also has the means to do so, since he has recourse to the nation, and can make it the judge of the dispute through new elections, or a referendum, or both.

"[17]In March 2023 French president Emmanuel Macron used the provision to increase the age of retirement in France, provoking outrage and street demonstrations,[18] His administration had passed budget legislation in this way on ten previous occasions.

Since the administrations of the Fifth Republic have always been more united than those of prior coalition governments, the question of a possible disagreement between the prime minister and the Cabinet remains theoretical.

"[31] As an important concession, however, which averted a strictly presidential regime, the head of state must "reconcile the general interest regarding the choice of the people with an orientation that is free from the parliament.

But after the presidential election of December 1965, Prime Minister Georges Pompidou became once again head of a third government, and waited for the opening of the common session of the parliament in April to present his program, making a simple declaration followed by a debate without a vote, and thus without a commitment of responsibility, although he had a solid parliamentary majority.

François Mitterrand attacked the Assembly, saying: "The simple language and the grammar [...] demonstrate in the clearest way that the prime minister has to commit the responsibility of his government to his program, and that this obligation, so decided, imposes itself upon him in a strict way."

When invoking the vote de confiance [fr] (motion of confidence) in the National Assembly, the prime minister generally took the opportunity to make an important political statement.

A question de confiance may also help an administration in its relations with its majority in the legislative branch, reassuring deputies who are worried about the popularity of their party, through a victory in the Assembly which was all but assured, rallying the troops with a clear contrast to the opposition, and if necessary force a difficult coalition partner, such as the Rassemblement pour la République between 1976 and 1981, or Communist Party between 1981 and 1986, to reaffirm its allegiance to the majority.

However, where the measure is narrowly focused they are especially tied to their assenting vote, as opposed to a broad statement of administration support, which does not prevent disavowal of certain of its aspects.

Prime Minister Jacques Chaban-Delmas on 24 May 1972 asked for and obtained the confidence of the Assembly, not without clearly reaffirming that the administration proceeds from the president, who may at any time put an end to its functions.

The motion that failed with the narrowest margin targeted the government of Pierre Bérégovoy's agricultural policy in June 1992, which lacked only three votes to pass.

Apart from the dualist aspects specific to the Fifth Republic, which can also help explain the solidity of governments versus the Assembly, the limits of "technical" rationalisation of parliamentarism have often been remarked upon.

At the same time, one may note the effect of changing the election method in Italy in 1993, in the absence of major reform of the constitution, which remained strict monist parliamentarism, incidentally fairly close to that of the Fourth Republic.

The motion was filed on October 2, after General de Gaulle on 30 September announced a referendum (in accordance with Article 11 of the Constitution) to organize the election of the President of the Republic by direct suffrage.

De Gaulle took note of the resignation without formally accepting it, requested the government remain in office, and announced the dissolution of the National Assembly on 9 October.

»[43] Its wording is not far from suggesting the use of Title IX, the Haute Cour de Justice (Article 68), the submission of an accusation against the president of the Republic of high treason, rather than just censure of the government.

Determining and conducting the policy of the nation on the contrary implies being its primary author, to which the constitution devotes its article 49, which requires the Assembly to prioritize debating the legislative projects of the government.

The traditional mechanism of the question of confidence (distinct from the more limited that remains in paragraph 1 under the Fifth Republic) forces the parliament to undertake a blocking of government policy and the quasi-censure implied by the rejection of a project.

In the 1946 constitution this measure was among those which contributed the most to the instability of government and the absence of clear policy in a particularly difficult context, marked until 1954 by the war in Indochina and later in Algeria.

After a long ministerial crisis and a brief intermission of Pierre Pflimlin as president of the Council, de Gaulle took power June 1 and his government was empowered to draw up a new constitution.

Given these conditions he felt that the exclusive domain of parliament did not include any topic on which a law project could have been urgent, and that therefore there would be no occasion for such a brutal procedure.

Pflimlin and his party, the MRP, imposed their solution: in the consultative constitutional committee, composed primarily of parliamentarians, examining the legislative project of the government, Pierre-Henri Teitgen subordinated the referendum to the adoption of the article.

Despite the opposition of Paul Reynaud, an ardent defender of the prerogatives of parliament who chaired the consultative committee, and that of Michel Debré, de Gaulle, very concerned that the constitution be adopted, and furthermore seeing that his ideas on referendum would not be able to be accepted, rallied to the article.

The new arrangement is more efficient, in that the legislators will prefer not to vote to force the resignation of the government even if they oppose the law in question, because they fear a form of political suicide in the eyes of the voters.