The Influence of the Government and the Constitutional Council in the Legislative Procedure of the French Fifth Republic

Abstract

Mény and Knapp: “the history of every country has a powerful
effect on the ways in which legislative tasks are divided between
parliaments and other bodies."1
. Until the adoption of the Constitution of
1958 the French constitutional tradition remained consistent to the
“classical” separation of power between the parliament and the executive
and the absolutely unlimited legislative power of the parliament. The
Constitution of the French Fifth Republic introduced certain innovations
that limited the legislative power of the parliament. These limitations
that derived from the power of the Government and the Constitutional
Council in the legislative sphere seem to make the parliament “a body
through which the laws are passes and not a body that passes the laws”.