КОНТРОЛА УСТАВНОСТИ У ФРАНЦУСКОЈ
CONSTITUTIONAL CONTROL IN FRANCE

Summary/Abstract: The French constitutional tradition has for a long time been intolerant toward the institution of the control of constitutionality, while treating it as incompatible with the conception of people's sovereignty and of division of power. The Constitution of the Fifth Republic of 1958 has, in concordance to the conception of the rationalized parliamentarism envisaged by it, provided particular body vested with the basic task to take care that the parliament does not encroach into government’s competence and that it adheres to constitutional provisions. This was the Constitutional Council — a body which, by its composition, has been at the same time a political and the judicial body, while by its jurisdiction, it has been at the same time the constitutional and the elected judge. Initial, rather narrow possibilities for initiating the proceedings for preliminary assessment of the constitutionality of laws, have been extended in 1974 through the constitutional reform (when it was made possible that the Constitutional Council be addressed also by sixty members of parhament or by sixty senators). In practice, the Constitutional Council went through several periods of its development. In the first one he has been »a watch-dog«, whose task has been to taike care that the parhament does not encroach into government's competence and that the parhament be strictly limited to the role set forth to it by the Constitution. During such period the Council appeared to be a body in the service of the executive power. The turning point came about in 1971, when the Council is, first of ah, the institution protecting the individual freedoms. Due to the 1974 constitutional reform, the Constitutional Council became since then also a means of defending the minority against the misuse by the majority. However, the Constitutional Council did not permit to the ©position to be dragged into systematic denying of legislative activities of the majority, which only goes to its credit and speaks in itself about the quality of that institution. The system of control of constitutionality in France through the Constitutional Council has contributed to he revalorisation of constitutional law and, consequently, of the state of law. It is today an institution which is entirely integrated into the French political life.

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