Politics Council of States does not want to limit parliamentary procedural requests
A member of the National Council should continue to be able to submit parliamentary initiatives, motions and postulates at will. The number of such initiatives should not be limited to 32 per legislature. This is the opinion of the Council of States.
05.03.2025, 12:38
SDA
On Wednesday, it rejected a parliamentary initiative by National Councillor Thomas Matter (SVP/ZH) - by 25 votes to 10 with one abstention. The issue is therefore off the table, although the National Council approved the initiative last summer.
For the majority, it was not appropriate to restrict parliamentary rights, said Mathias Zopfi (Greens/GL) on behalf of the Council of States' Political Institutions Committee (SPK-S). The right of individual members of the Federal Assembly to initiate and propose motions is enshrined in the constitution. "Any restriction of this would require a legal basis."
It is the responsibility of the individual member of the Council and the parliamentary groups to use these rights sensibly, said Zopfi. "I also think that parliamentary instruments are sometimes used in an inflationary manner." However, most council members have the self-discipline to do so.
Zopfi mentioned statistics according to which the vast majority of Council members submit significantly fewer than 32 parliamentary initiatives and procedural requests in a legislative period. Only eleven members of the National Council and one member of the Council of States have submitted more than 32 initiatives, motions and postulates.
"The limit would achieve practically nothing," concluded Zopfi. On the contrary, the legal anchoring of such a high number of possible initiatives could give the impression that the Council members would have to submit more initiatives in order to at least begin to exhaust their quota. "Let's spare ourselves this experiment."
Pirmin Schwander (SVP/SZ) unsuccessfully campaigned for a limit. "This could lead to a qualitative improvement in the handling of motions in the National Council and prevent motions having to be written off after two years because they could not be dealt with."
