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Unit 8: Constitutional Structure: Legislature

commissions must be allowed to the Economic and Social Council in case of a bill under discussion Notes
has a bearing on its life or working. The commissions submit their reports to the house after
consideration, but the Government or 50 deputies may move the discharge of a bill to the National
Assembly.
The commissions of the French Parliament resemble the committees of the English Parliament in the
sense that their number is limited to 6 (by Art. 43) and they are not ‘specialised’ groups. It is a different
thing that an ad hoc commission may be set up for a specific work.
However, the large number of members in each committee is the result of a deliberate thinking: the
new Constitution strives to make the strength of a committee rather ‘unwieldy’ so that each commission
includes many others that the ‘experts’ who, as during the previous regimes, desired fighting private
battles with the ministers.
What is, indeed, striking to note here is that the new arrangement has deprived the commissions to
behave like the masters of their creators. It is the house which takes final decision on the adoption or
rejection of a bill and the commission cannot go to the final length of changing the bill in question to
the point of its ‘derecognisability.’ It seeks “to reduce drastically the power of the committees from
one of complete control of the legislative process to that of advice given to the House on the line to
take on the bill in general and on the various clauses.” However, the utility of the commission system
is undeniable. As Herman Finer notes: “The commissions save the Assembly from being swamped
by the deluge of private members’ bills, the proposal of which is allowed without limit. Secondly,
they are essential to the production of coherent and consistent laws, considering that the cabinets
have not lived long enough to assure this.’
Commissions

Assembly Senate
1. Church, Family and Social Affair 1. Cultural Affairs
2. Foreign Affairs 2 Economic Affairs and Planning
3. National Defence and Armed Forces 3. Foreign Affairs, Defence and
Armed Forces
4. Finance, Economy and Planning 4. Social Affairs
5. Constitutional Laws (Legislation 5. Finance, Budgetary Control and
and General Administration) Nation’s Economic Accounts
6. Production and Exchange 6. Constitutional Laws,
7. Procedure of the Assembly Legislation, Universal Suffrage,
(Temporary) Procedure and General Administration

Legislative Process: The right to move a bill is available to a minister as well as to an ordinary
member of both the Houses with two differences—first a finance bill must originate in the National
Assembly and, second, a bill moved by a minister is called a ‘project’, while a bill moved by an
ordinary member is called a ‘proposal’ or ‘proposition’. The mover has to draft his bill himself, but
the minister may take the help of his secretariat. There is no office of the Parliamentary Counsel in
France as it is in Britain to draft official bills according to the policy of the cabinet. It is provided in the
Constitution (Art. 40) that bills and amendments introduced by the members of the Parliament shall
not be considered when their adoption would result either in the dimunition of public financial
resources or in the creation or increase of certain public expenditures.
A bill is first sent to a bureau of the House in which it originates. It is immediately referred to the
appropriate committee or commission in the printed form and consists of a brief explanation of what
it expects to achieve. The Government may demand that the bill be sent to a special committee, to be
established for that special purpose, rather than to one of the six permanent commissions and this
request must be honoured vide Art. 43 of the Constitution. Then, the committee studies the bill and
submits its report to the House within a period of 3 months unless otherwise suggested. In certain

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