Constituencies for French residents overseas

The constituencies for French residents overseas are eleven French constituencies, each electing one representative to the National Assembly.

They were created by the 2010 redistricting of French legislative constituencies, the aim of which was to enable French citizens overseas (Français établis hors de France) to be represented as such, rather than vote in a constituency on French territory, as was the case previously. Their creation does not increase the overall number of seats in the Assembly, which remains stable at 577, since it is compensated for by a redrawing of boundaries which reduces the number of seats in France itself to 566. These measures were implemented for the June 2012 legislative election. (There are already Senators representing overseas citizens, since 1982, but, like all French Senators, they are elected indirectly, by the Assembly of French Citizens Abroad.)

The creation of these constituencies created some controversy, when Le Monde estimated that they would be far more favourable to the main centre-right party, the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), then in power, than to the main centre-left party, the Socialist Party (PS). The newspaper pointed out that, in nine of these constituencies, a majority of voters appeared to favour the right, based on the figures from the 2007 French presidential election. The constituency of Central and Eastern Europe and that of North-West Africa were the only ones to appear left-leaning. While Le Monde provided the figures without comment, left-wing politicians such as Socialist MP Jean-Jacques Urvoas suggested that the government was attempting to provide itself with extra seats, and Communist MP Jean-Paul Lecoq suggested overseas citizens should continue to vote solely in French constituencies.

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