French constitutional law of 23 July 2008
The Constitutional law on the Modernisation of the Institutions of the Fifth Republic () was enacted into French constitutional law by the Parliament of France in July 2008, to reform state institutions. The Defender of Rights was established in this law. History. Proposed in Nicolas Sarkozy's manifesto during the French presidential election of 2007, the stated goal of the changes was to modernise the institutions of the Fifth Republic. The "Comité de réflexion et de proposition sur la modernisation et le rééquilibrage des institutions", (literally : "A committee of reflection and proposal on the  modernisation and the re-balancing of the institutions"), presided over by Édouard Balladur, a former Prime Minister, was established in July 2007. It was composed primarily of constitutional jurists and political personalities with legal competence. Following three months of work, it submitted its report to the President of the Republic on 29 October 2007. This resulted in a bill, which was approved by the National Assembly on 9 July 2008 and by the Senate on the 17th. The bill re-evaluated the role of the executive and augmented the parliament's powers. Some of the proposals were not ratified, such  as the introduction of Proportional representation for elections of the National Assembly, the ban on dual mandates ("Cumul des mandats"), nor the reform of representation in the Senate. Others clauses, such as a two-term limit for the President of the Republic were added. The final vote was submitted to Congress on 21 July 2008 and ratified by only one vote more than the required three-fifths (60%) majority of votes cast. The press drew attention to the aye vote of Jack Lang, who had broken with his party whip. The President of the National Assembly, Bernard Accoyer, also voted , which defied the tradition whereby the President of a sitting abstains from voting. Without those two votes the bill would not have passed. The text of the law received the Great Seal of France on 1 October 2008. Amendments. In the following translation, where appropriate, a direct English equivalent of the French term is used. Otherwise, in order to make the terminology intelligible to at least some English speakers, terms used in the United Kingdom parliament are substituted. For example "une assemblée" is the equivalent of "a house" of the U.K. parliament. Only rarely, is equivalence complete. For example, the  Senate of France is in only some respects the equivalent of the House of Lords. Details of the vote. The votes of the parliamentarians met in Congress were distributed as follows.: