Annoying fact, these are the spots that lack actual power in the current French constitution, given what contemporary France is.
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Originally Posted by mtaylor444
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The Senate that's accommodated at the Luxembourg palace and the National Assembly located on Place de la Concorde, that's supposed to be the counterpart of the House of Representatives in Washington, DC. People in the country often get the feeling that they're just political theaters, some sort of meaningless democratic ornamentations while all significant decisions are made (or discarded) at the Élysée palace where the president stays. The constitution of the French 5th Republic gave the president alone too much power, so much that it would definitely be deemed excessive in the US. Meanwhile, representatives and senators are widely seen as obedient puppets. So you can regard the 5th Republic as an overly presidential system while it's supposed to be semi-presidential, semi-parliamentary. The US presidential institutions seem both more effective and more stable. I'm in favor of a 6th Republic widely inspired by the US system, more decentralized and in which both Houses have a more significant counterweight.