French Community - Decline and Abolition

Decline and Abolition

Among the states, the Community as originally envisaged functioned only during 1959 when six sessions of the executive council were held in various capitals. Immediately after the sixth session, held in Dakar in December, President de Gaulle agreed to Mali’s claim for national sovereignty, thus beginning the process that would see all of the states being granted independence in 1960. On 4 June 1960, articles 85 and 86 were amended by Constitutional Act No. 60-525, allowing the member states to become fully independent, either still as members of the Community or not. This amendment also allowed for a state that was already fully independent to join the Community without losing its independence; this provision was never taken advantage of by any state.

By 1961, only the Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Gabon, the Malagasy Republic and Senegal still belonged to the Community; the constitutional bodies no longer continued to function; the term ‘president of the community’ disappeared from official statements; and it seemed that the only remaining differences between those states that were members of the community and those that had left it lay in the fact that the diplomatic representatives in Paris of the former bore the title high commissioner, and those of the latter ‘ambassador’. Moreover the second title tended to be used in all cases without distinction.

Although the French Community had almost ceased to exist as an institution by the early 1960s, the remaining members never formally withdrew and the relevant articles were not removed from the French Constitution until they were finally abrogated by Constitutional Act number 95-880 of 4 August 1995.