French Senate

The Senate (in French : le Sénat) is the upper house of the Parliament of France. A Sénat was also the upper house during the French Consulate of 1799-1804.

Composition and election

Up until September 2004 the French Senate had 321 senators who were elected for a 9-year term. After this date, the mandate was reduced to 6 years while the number of senators will progressively increase to 346 in 2010 in order to reflect changes in the French demography.

Related Topics:
2004 - 2010

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Senators are elected by approximately 150,000 representatives of local administrative councils (and deputies of the National Assembly). This system introduces a bias in the composition of the Senate, which favors rural areas. As a consequence, while the political majority changes frequently in the National Assembly, the Senate has remained conservative since the foundation of the Fifth Republic, and it is expected that it will remain so in the forthcoming years.

Related Topics:
Conservative - Fifth Republic

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Following from a tradition started by the first French National Assembly during the French revolution, the "left-wing" parties sit to the left as seen from the president's seat, and the "right-wing" parties sit to the right, and the seating thus indicates the political spectrum as represented in the Senate.

Related Topics:
Left-wing - Right-wing - Political spectrum

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