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Austria Nationalrat
The Nationalrat (National Council), the lower house of
parliament, exercises all of the powers usually associated with a
national legislature. It has the power to remove the entire
cabinet or individual members of it by a vote of no confidence.
All legislation and treaties must be approved by the Nationalrat.
Before a vote can take place, at least one-third of the
Nationalrat's members must be present. A simple majority suffices
for the passage of legislation. Sessions are public unless the
deputies determine otherwise.
Deputies elect a president and second and third presidents
from among their members to serve during the four-year
legislative term. Party leaders who are members of their party's
executive and of a parliamentary faction that serves as a liaison
between parliament and a political party are most likely to be
presidential candidates. The president and the third president
belong to the same party, usually the party holding the most
seats in the Nationalrat. The second president belongs to the
other major party. Presidential duties include nominating
employees of the Federal Chancellery, whose staff serves the
three presidents. The three presidents preside over plenary
sessions in two-hour shifts. They also join with the chairmen of
the parliamentary factions to form the Presidial Conference,
which directs the Nationalrat's activities and decides the time
and agenda of plenary sessions and, to a lesser extent, the time
and agenda of the committees. The Presidial Conference is one of
the rare groups not affected by the custom of proportional
representation. All parties holding seats in the Nationalrat are
represented on the conference.
In 1993 the Nationalrat contained roughly fifteen committees
in which legislative proposals are both prepared and examined and
the results of parliamentary investigations considered. Each
committee has various numbers of subcommittees assigned to deal
with specific kinds of legislation. In addition to the
committees, there are also the Main Committee and the Permanent
Subcommittee, the members of which are elected at the start of
each new legislative period. The Main Committee has
responsibility for overseeing aspects of the state-run industries
and for dispatching Austrian troops on international peacekeeping
missions. It also participates in deciding the date for
Nationalrat elections and setting rates for postal and telephone
services. The president of the Nationalrat serves as chairman of
the Main Committee. The Permanent Subcommittee plays a limited
role because its main function is to fulfill the duties of the
Main Committee in the case of the dissolution of the Nationalrat
by the president.
Equally as important as the committees are the Klubs
(factions), which all parties in the Nationalrat maintain. The
factions usually have a leader and an executive committee, and
they provide deputies with a behind-the-scenes setting to discuss
political strategy with like-minded colleagues. Individuals
elected as deputies to the Nationalrat automatically become
members of their party's faction. Faction leaders assign deputies
to committees and decide on the questions that are to be asked
during debates and the priority for legislative initiatives.
In addition to the work of the committees, another important
function of the Nationalrat is to question the government
regularly on its activities and legislative proposals. One device
frequently employed is an "interpellation," which summons for
questioning before the Nationalrat a particular cabinet minister
or government official. A minimum of twenty deputies is required
to set an interpellation in motion. Questioning a government
official is the prelude to a parliamentary debate on the issue.
A 1970 amendment to the election laws increased the number of
Nationalrat seats from 165 to 183. Seats in the Nationalrat are
divided among the country's nine provinces according to
population. Deputies serve a four-year term and are elected
according to constitutional and other federal laws. Candidates
must be at least twenty years old on January 1 of the election
year and must also be eligible to vote.
The Nationalrat has only one session per year, beginning no
earlier than September 15 and ending no later than July 15. An
extraordinary session of the Nationalrat can be convoked either
by order of the federal president, by request of the cabinet, or
by request of one-third of the deputies. Once a request has been
made, the extraordinary session must commence within two weeks.
After a parliamentary election, the newly elected Nationalrat
must be convened within thirty days.
The Nationalrat can be dissolved either by presidential
action or by itself. The president can dissolve the Nationalrat
at the chancellor's request, but he is limited to dismissing it
only once for the same reason. New elections must be held soon
enough to enable the new parliament to convene within 100 days of
the dissolution. The Nationalrat is empowered to dissolve itself
by a simple majority vote.
During the Second Republic, membership of the Nationalrat has
been heavily weighted toward men who come from white-collar
professions. Changes in the sociological profile of the deputies
have occurred slowly. The Nationalrat elected in November 1990
contained a record 22 percent of female deputies. Prior to this
election, female deputies had never accounted for more than 15
percent of the total number of deputies. The average age of the
deputies elected in 1990 was forty-six. Almost 40 percent of the
deputies elected in 1990 were university graduates, and 25
percent were employees of political parties, politically oriented
interest groups, or social welfare organizations.
The majority of legislative proposals originate in the
executive. Legislation occasionally starts in the Nationalrat,
but the close cooperation between the executive and the majority
party in parliament makes such initiation unnecessary most of the
time. During the Second Republic, governmental legislative
proposals have outnumbered Nationalrat initiatives by three to
one. Parliament's role in the legislative process is focused more
on bringing to public attention the background of the
government's legislative proposals and exposing any mistakes the
government may have made. Opposition parties have the right to
force the government to answer any questions about pending
legislation.
Before a bill is introduced in parliament, it has already
passed through an intensive process of examination. The
government solicits comments from the various interest groups
affected by the bill, especially the chambers of agriculture,
commerce, and labor
(see Principal Economic Interest Groups
, ch.
3). During this stage, a bill frequently is modified to meet the
objections of key interest groups and opposition parties in
parliament. Changes to legislative proposals may also be made
after a bill has been introduced in the Nationalrat, but the
majority of changes are made before the bill is introduced
officially. Bills are amended significantly by the parliament
only 10 to 15 percent of the time.
By West European standards, the percentage of bills passed
unanimously by the Austrian parliament is high. Unanimity
prevailed anywhere between 38 and 49 percent of the time during
the parliaments of the 1970s and 1980s. In the late 1980s and
early 1990s, with the advent of the Greens in parliament and the
increased power of the FPÖ, unanimity was on the decline.
As the complexity of the issues facing government has
increased, so too has the importance of committees to the
parliament's work. After a bill reaches the Nationalrat, it is
assigned to a committee and frequently also to a subcommittee.
Deputies typically spend twice as much time in committee hearings
as in plenary sessions. The subcommittees hold even more hours of
hearings than the full committees. Because of the unwieldy nature
of plenary sessions, 80 percent of changes to government
legislation occur in committee.
In 1975 the Nationalrat amended its procedures to give the
opposition and smaller parties a greater role in the legislative
process. Under the 1975 amendments, one-third of the deputies can
request the Constitutional Court to review a law for
constitutionality. Further, one-third of the deputies can request
the government's accounting agency to conduct an audit of a
government agency. These changes reflect the intensification of
political competition that occurred in the Nationalrat after the
long period of grand coalition governments between the two major
parties ended in 1966. The ÖVP, as the major opposition party
during the era of SPÖ rule (1970-83), led the drive for greater
rights for minority parties.
Data as of December 1993
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