French voters go to the ballot box on April 10 and 24 to elect a new president or to re-elect the incumbent Emmanuel Macron, who is eligible to stand for a second and final consecutive five-year term. France's head of state enjoys considerable powers compared to many other world leaders. FRANCE 24 takes a closer look at those powers and the checks and balances in place to rein them in.
France has features of both presidential and parliamentary systems of government. But it is clear which player enjoys the broadest powers. "French presidents have more power than the leaders of most other advanced democracies including Germany, the United Kingdom and, arguably, the United States," the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations explained in 2017. "They not only command the executive apparatus, including the armed forces, but tend to drive the national policymaking agenda with little parliamentary oversight," it added. A French president is directly elected by the people and can only be relieved of his duties by the nation's parliament in the extraordinary circumstance of a "dereliction of his duties manifestly incompatible with the exercise of his mandate"; in contrast, the president has the power to dissolve the parliament at any time.
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