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Main bodies
The Bureau is the collective body which, under the authority of the President of the Assembly, manages internal matters and directs National Assembly work.
The Bureau comprises 22 members : the President; 6 Vice-Presidents ; 3 Quaestors ; and 12 Secretaries. The President (see hereafter), subject to annual reelection from 1875 to 1958, is now elected for the length of the term (Article 32 of the Constitution). All the other members are elected each year at the commencement of the ordinary session, in October. According to Article 10, paragraph 2, of the National Assembly Rules of Procedure, the composition of the Bureau shall strive ‘to reflect (…) the political make-up of the Assembly’, without strict proportionality being required. When there are as many candidatures as posts to be filled, which is most often the case, their appointment does not entail a ballot.
Two functions are directly defined by the Constitution : - Article 26, paragraph 2, subjects to its authorisation any arrest of a deputy or any custodial or semi-custodial measure taken against him. - Article 89, paragraph 3, sets forth that in the event of an amendment of the Constitution, the Bureau of the Congress shall be that of the National Assembly. The Bureau has general management powers over the Assembly. ’It shall have power to arrange the deliberations of the Assembly and to organise and direct its departments’ (Article 14, paragraph 1, of the Rules of Procedure). Some functions are exercised individually : Vice-Presidents stand in for and represent the President ; Quaestors (see hereafter) are tasked with administrative and financial management; Secretaries take care of voting operations. Collegially, it lies with the Bureau to represent the Assembly at external events, interpret and apply the Rules of Procedure, settle major sitting incidents, and ensure fair treatment with regard to audiovisual communication. The organisation of the departments and the staff regulations of the Assembly’s personnel are settled by the Bureau’s deliberations.
To prepare some of the Bureau’s decisions, it has become customary to set up delegations within it. There are currently six delegations. During the XIIth legislature these delegations were tasked with : - Application of the deputy’s service rules, - Communication, - International activities, - Questions concerning parliamentary offices, - Consideration of the financial admissibility of Members’ bills, - Study groups. During the XIIIth legislature the delegations are relating to the following fields : - Broadcasting communication and press, - Application of the deputy’s service rules, - Questions concerning study groups and parliamentary offices, - International activities, - Computing and new technologies, - Consideration of the admissibility of Members’ bills.
Each of these delegations is presided over by a Vice-President who reports his delegation’s conclusions to the Bureau. The Bureau meets approximately once a month. Each meeting give rise to the publication in the Feuilleton (internal bulletin) and on the Assembly’s website, of a list of decisions, some of which are published in the Journal officiel (Official Gazette).
The Constitution of the Vth Republic granted length to the mandate of the President of the National Assembly by having him elected for the five years of the term (Article 32 of the Constitution), whereas under the IVth Republic, he was elected at the beginning of each annual session. While he has lost some of his prerogatives — in particular during the interim period between Presidents of the Republic, to the benefit of the President of the Senate — the President of the National Assembly has replaced the latter as President of Parliament convened in Congress in Versailles in the event of a constitutional amendment. The two Presidents share several constitutional prerogatives : power of appointment, right of referral; and in some cases they must be consulted. - The two Presidents each appoint three members of the Constitutional Council (Article 56, paragraph 1, of the Constitution) ; they each also appoint a prominent citizen to sit at two sections of the Higher Council of the Judiciary (Article 65, paragraph 3, of the Constitution). - The Presidents are empowered to refer to the Constitutional Council Acts of Parliament before their promulgation (Article 61, paragraph 2, of the Constitution) or an international treaty that may contain a clause contrary to the Constitution (Article 54 of the Constitution). The Vth Republic has therefore entrusted the Presidents of the assemblies with a new role of defenders of the Constitution, which has broadened the scope of their posts. - The Presidents of the two assemblies must be consulted in the event of dissolution of the National Assembly (Article 12, paragraph 1, of the Constitution), when the President of the Republic decides to implement Article 16, as well as in the case laid down in Article 28, paragraph 3, when the Prime Minister decides the holding of additional sitting days. The President of the National Assembly is also responsible for the internal and external security of the Assembly (Rule 13, paragraph 2, of the National Assembly Rules of Procedure). As President of the Bureau and of the Chairmen’s Conference, he alone is empowered to ‘make National Assembly communications’ (Rule 13, paragraph 3, of the Rules of Procedure), particularly by authenticating the result of its deliberations, establishing an overall assessment of each session and defending the Assembly’s prerogatives. PRESIDENTS OF THE ASSEMBLY Since the appointment of its first President, Jean-Sylvain Bailly, on 17 June 1789, the National Assembly has seen some 240 personalities follow one another at the ‘perch’, to use the word commonly designating the presidential desk. This high figure can be explained by the practice of the revolutionary assemblies which had deemed it fitting to replace the incumbent every fortnight : that way the Constituent Assembly, Legislative Assembly, Convention, Council of the Five Hundred and the Legislative Body saw 188 Presidents follow one another in the fifteen years of their existence. The opposite approach was chosen by the constituents of the Vth Republic. They set forth that the Assembly elects its President at the beginning of the term for its whole length, in other words normally five years. Therefore the President of the Assembly, to whom the Constitution grants considerable powers, enjoys a stature which, apart from the power of influence resulting from his duties, grants him a specific role in the operation of the institutions. Among the incumbents, many famous names can be quoted, such as, apart from Bailly, Talleyrand, Sieyès, the Abbot Grégoire, Mirabeau, Condorcet, Danton, Robespierre, Saint-Just, Lazare Carnot, Cambacérès, Chénier, Lucien Bonaparte, Royer-Collard, Gambetta, Edouard Herriot... Since 1958, the following have successively occupied the seat : Jacques Chaban-Delmas (December 1958 - June 1969, Achille Peretti (June 1969 - April 1973), Edgar Faure (April 1973 - April 1978), Jacques Chaban-Delmas (April 1978 - May 1981), Louis Mermaz (July 1981 - April 1986), Jacques Chaban-Delmas (April 1986 - May 1988), Laurent Fabius (June 1988 - January 1992), Henri Emmanuelli (January 1992 - April 1993), Philippe Séguin (April 1993 - April 1997), Laurent Fabius (June 1997-March 2000), Raymond Forni (29 March 2000 - 18 June 2002), Jean-Louis Debré (25 June 2002 - 4 March 2007), Patrick Ollier (2007), Bernard Accoyer (since June 2007). The former Presidents of the National Assembly In the conduct of the debates, the President — replaced, whenever necessary, by one of the Vice-Presidents — plays a role the scope of which can be measured by Rule 52 of the Rules of Procedure : ‘The President shall open the sitting, control debate, enforce these Rules and maintain order; he may at any time suspend or adjourn the sitting.’ The Presidents personify and represent the National Assembly in the outside world. The share of international relations in their activities has increased over the past fifteen years or so. They receive many foreign personalities and delegations. Since June 1993, resuming a tradition interrupted since the reception in 1919 of Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States, foreign heads of State and government are received not only in the Hôtel de Lassay and the Palais Bourbon, but also in the hemicycle where no President of the French Republic has entered since 1875. The Constitution of 1958 moreover bans the President of the Republic from directly addressing the assemblies; he communicates with them by messages which are read for him and which do not give rise to any debate (Article 18). The Chairmen’s Conference, created back in 1911, mainly intervenes in setting the Assembly’s work schedule. Unlike the Bureau, it does not result directly from a vote by the deputies. The following are members by right : the President of the National Assembly, who convenes the Conference and presides over it; the six Vice Presidents; the Chairmen of the six standing committees and, where applicable, of a special committee; the chairmen of the groups who, in the event of a vote, are allocated ‘a number of votes equal to the number of members of the group’ (Rule 48, paragraph 7, of the Rules of Procedure); but voting is rare at the Chairmen’s Conference. In addition there is the general rapporteur of the Finance Committee and, since 1995, the Chairman of the Delegation for the European Union, a sign of the influence acquired by this body. The Government is represented on the Chairmen’s Conference by one of its members, customarily the minister tasked with relations with Parliament. At first sight, since 1958 the Conference’s role has no longer been more than executory. At its weekly meeting, ‘it examines the Assembly’s order of business for the current week and the two following weeks.’ In this respect it is notified through its President, ‘of requests made by the Government for business to be given precedence on the Assembly’s agenda.’ (Rule 48, paragraph 4, of the Rules of Procedure). For the rest, it limits itself to making proposals ‘in addition to debates given precedence at the Government’s request’, which forms the complementary agenda. The constitutional amendment of 4 August 1995 set forth a monthly sitting reserved by priority for an agenda set by the Assembly. The Chairmen’s Conference chooses the date of these sittings and sets the rules for their sharing between all the political groups. It also lies with the Conference to set the date of the debate of motions of censure when any are moved, and to determine speaking time in the discussion of legislation and in debates, as well as the organisational rules and the detailed schedule of the budget ‘marathon’. It also determines the weekly sittings devoted to questions for oral answer, of which it organises the conduct. Lastly, the Conference decides on the organisation of certain ‘formal’ public ballots which are postponed to the time most favourable for participation of the deputies (Rule 65-1, paragraph 1, of the Rules of Procedure). The Chairmen’s Conference is a place of meeting and even of negotiation between the representatives of the groups and of committees and the Government. Apart from matters concerning the agenda, its meeting is an opportunity to evoke and solve all the immediate problems which the operation of the Assembly can cause, particularly in the exercise of its deliberative duty. In this respect it plays an important and growing role in the operation of the Assembly.
The term and the post date back to the Senatus-consulte of 28 Frimaire year XII (20 December 1803). Since the Third Republic, there have been three Quaestors. Traditionally two of them belong to the majority and the third to the opposition. ‘The Quaestors shall be responsible for financial and administrative matters, pursuant to guidelines laid down by the Bureau. No new expenditure shall be incurred without prior consultation with them.’ (Rule 15, paragraph 1, of the Rules of Procedure). The National Assembly appoints them at the beginning of each term and, like all other members of the Bureau, except the President, renews them each year in October, at the opening of the session (Rule 10, paragraph 1, of the Rules of Procedure). The three Quaestors deal collegially with the administrative and financial management of the Assembly. Management of the personnel, equipment, fleet of cars, buildings, restaurants and cafe, social security regimes, and pensions… are their responsibility. Their role is particularly important in the budgetary sphere : they prepare and determine the Assembly’s budget — in a formation where they sit with the Quaestors of the Senate and under the presidency of a chamber president at the Audit Court — and they commit expenditure. As the assemblies are financially autonomous, Quaestors commit expenditure without being subject to the visa of a financial comptroller, an official of the executive branch of government. On the authority of the President, the Quaestors ensure security at the Palais-Bourbon. In this respect they organise and check the means of access and circulation in the Palais. This is an especially delicate task in view of the ‘open doors’ policy applied by the Assembly in recent years.
The Constitution, in its Article 4, deals only with political parties and groups and not with parliamentary groups which form the organised mouthpiece of parties within the Assembly. Groups have existed since their creation in 1910 at the Chamber of Deputies. Today, the Rules of Procedure, which devote a chapter to them (Chapter V, Rules 19 to 23), define them as the meeting of deputies sharing ‘political affinities’. To form a group, two conditions must be met : a minimum number of deputies, set at 30 in 1959 and then 20 in 1988, must be brought together; and the formation of the group must be accompanied with a ‘political statement’ signed by its members and moved by the chairman they have appointed. at the beginning of each term, after the formation of groups, the President of the Assembly convenes their chairmen to divide the floor of the chamber into as many sections as there are groups. Groups freely define their organisation, meeting and voting procedure, and their Rules of Procedure. They are given premises and a secretariat. Their functions and powers have expanded along with the progression — unequal depending on parties — of party discipline. Groups therefore play a role in many fields concerning the organisation and operation of the Assembly; the numerical size of each group is taken into account for some appointments (Bureau, committees, delegations and offices). The same applies for the allocation of speaking time in debates, the allocation of questions for oral answer or, lastly, explanations of vote. Group chairmen, who are ex officio members of the Chairmen’s Conference — within which, in the event of a vote, they have a number of votes equal to the number of members of the group they chair — also have a great number of prerogatives in the conduct of the legislative procedure and in the holding of the public sitting. They can, for instance, themselves request, or via a member specially appointed for this purpose, a suspension of a sitting or a public ballot. They can also request a verification of the quorum, but this right must be exercised personally. They also have certain powers of initiative for the inclusion on the agenda of some instruments : resolutions to create a committee of inquiry or on draft Community instruments, and Members’ bills debated at the monthly private members’ sittings.
Parliamentary
committees and parliamentary delegations
THE ASSEMBLY AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
While, among French institutions, the major role in international relations is assigned to the executive, there is nevertheless scope for the assemblies to intervene, particularly through what is sometimes called ‘parliamentary diplomacy’. Their role in this sphere has increased in recent years. The Assembly intervenes firstly within the framework of its institutional powers : authorisation to ratify treaties and international agreements (see Third part); debate of the appropriations for the ministry of foreign affairs and for the ministry of cooperation, which debate gives rise to the European Union levy; and debates organised following governmental declarations on France’s foreign or European policy, which can also give rise to questions to the Government. It can be said that the Foreign Affairs Committee is permanently delegated by the Assembly to follow all matters in the sphere of international relations. A whole series of specific activities by the various Assembly bodies are to be added to this permanent activity : the President of the Assembly is often led to receive, at Hôtel de Lassay, Heads of State and Heads of Government whom he also meets during his official trips abroad, alone or accompanied by members of the Bureau; the standing committees have frequent contacts with their foreign counterparts by sending fact-finding missions; and friendship groups allow systematic and close relations with the members of Parliaments of nearly all countries. There are also international parliamentary assemblies whose meetings are attended by National Assembly delegations : Inter-Parliamentary Union, Parliamentary Assembly of Francophonie, parliamentary assemblies of the Council of Europe, of the Western European Union (WEU), of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). In recent years, new forms of intervention have developed : interparliamentary cooperation activities—sometimes called ‘democratic engineering’—consisting for the Assembly in providing technical aid for the operation of Parliaments desiring its support; election observation missions in foreign countries, carried out by members of the Bureau.
Within the
Bureau, a delegation is tasked with coordinating all the Assembly’s
international activities. Symposia under its aegis are organised on some
aspects of international relations.
© Assemblée nationale
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