More than 1800 hours of debates in Parliament
Published: Thursday, Dec 28th 2023, 09:40
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The 51st legislative period that ended in November was characterized by four consecutive crises. Between December 2019 and December 2023, Parliament met for over 1,800 hours, the equivalent of 75 one-and-a-half-hour films. Below is an insight into parliamentary work.
In October 2019, 90 new parliamentarians were elected: 68 to the National Council and 22 to the Council of States. A total of 95 women sat under the dome, 83 of them in the National Council - a record.
The 246 parliamentarians met for 216 days, spread over a total of 22 sessions. This corresponds to around 113 hours of debate per ordinary session, of which 67 were in the National Council and 45 in the Council of States, as well as one hour for the chambers combined.
Three quarters of the speaking time was used by the German-speaking parliamentarians and around a quarter by the French-speaking Swiss. Representatives from Italian-speaking Switzerland accounted for two percent of speaking time. The committees held numerous meetings. This resulted in a total of 5100 working hours - more than 100 hours per month.
Well over 8000 votes
During the debates in both chambers, 8345 votes were held. Members of parliament submitted 11,682 motions. In four years, around 1,800 motions were submitted to the National Council and around 400 to the Council of States, which equates to around nine motions per parliamentarian. 17 percent of the motions submitted were adopted.
Furthermore, every fourth parliamentary initiative was adopted - and almost half of the postulates. The latter are less binding for the Federal Council, as it responds to them with a report. 286 proposals have been submitted by the Federal Council in the past four years. The cantons have submitted 119 standing initiatives.
Parliament also dealt with 15 popular initiatives. The people took a position on 17 referendums and overturned Parliament's decision in four cases: the CO2 Act, media promotion, stamp duty and withholding tax. In addition, voters rejected three bills that Parliament had initiated in the 50th legislative period: the Hunting Act, tax deductions for childcare costs and the e-ID.
Crises at the center of the debate
The coronavirus, the war in Ukraine, the energy supply and the Credit Suisse crisis were the most important topics of the legislative period. In the 2020 summer session, just a few months after the outbreak of the pandemic, almost 500 procedural requests and parliamentary initiatives were submitted in connection with the coronavirus.
In contrast, 173 procedural requests and parliamentary initiatives relating to the war in Ukraine were submitted in the same session. However, non-crisis-related motions remained in the majority throughout the legislative period, as the Parliamentary Services wrote in the brochure "The Swiss Parliament in Graphics".
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