in which the office of president of the Republic was a largely ceremonial and powerless one. The Constitution of the Fifth Republic, that replaced it in 1958, greatly increased the president's powers. A 1962 referendum changed the constitution, so that the president would be directly elected by universal suffrage and not by the electoral college established in 1958. In 2000, a referendum shortened the presidential term from seven years to five years. A maximum of two consecutive terms was imposed after the 2008 constitutional reform. Election Term limits Since the 1962 presidential referendum, the officeholder has been directly elected by universal suffrage; they were previously elected by an electoral college. The length of the presidential term was reduced from seven years to five years following a 2000 referendum; the first election for a shorter term was held in 2002. Then-president Jacques Chirac was first elected in 1995 and again in 2002, and would have been able to run in 2007 had he chosen to, given the lack of term limits. Following a further change, the constitutional law of 2008 on the modernization of the institutions of the Fifth Republic, a president cannot serve more than two consecutive terms. François Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac were previously the only presidents to date who have served a full two terms (14 years for the former, 12 years for the latter). Incumbent Emmanuel Macron is the fourth president (after de Gaulle, Mitterrand, and Chirac) to win re-election following the 2022 presidential election. Electoral process French presidential elections are conducted using run-off voting, which ensures that the elected president always obtains a majority: if no candidate receives a majority of votes in the first round of voting, the two highest-scoring candidates arrive at a run-off. After a new president is elected, they go through a solemn investiture ceremony called a ("handing over of powers"). In order to be admitted as an official candidate, potential candidates must receive signed nominations (known as , for "sponsors") from more than 500 elected local officials, mostly mayors. These officials must be from at least 30 départements or overseas collectivities, and no more than 10% of them should be from the same département or collectivity. Furthermore, each official may nominate only one candidate. There are exactly 45,543 elected officials, including 33,872 mayors. Spending and financing of campaigns and political parties are highly regulated. There is a cap on spending (at