Parliamentary Control Of The Budget In France: A View From Inside The National Assembly

In France, as in many representative democracies, the decline of parliament has become a favourite theme for political theorists. It is a theme with many variations, of which one of the most popular is the withering away of the financial powers of the nation’s representatives. The belief that parliament’s examination of the budget must now be considered an unimportant ritual is one which many experts and politicians of all shades will support. They maintain that in times gone by the budget was the work of parliament, which sifted through all its elements and could at will turn the proposals inside out. Today, all real power has passed to the executive; the debate on the budget is no more than conversational and the parliamentary role is limited to the registration of governmental decisions.