Rights and duties of the deputies

This post will again deal with both chambers of the federal parliament, it determines rights and duties of deputies of the parliament which will the same in both chambers. This post brings no peculiarities, it determines in principle rules usual in many or most states' constitutions.

The first paragraph of my suggestion states  precisely incompatibility of the functions, that is to say it enumerates the functions which the deputy of the European federal parliament cannot hold. Separation of individual kinds of state power in the frame of one state system has to be safeguarded in the first place and so the first paragraph forbids a deputy of the federal parliament to be a representative of the executive or judicial power of the federation. But beside that, it forbids him to hold any other with pay remunerated position in the federation because the deputies should devote themselves only to the work for which they were elected. Except for separation of individual kinds of power, also separation of constitutional functions of the federation and the member states must be maintained, nobody should be both a holder of state power of any member state and the federation or the federation and an autonomous region of any member state in the same time. For if the federal constitution determines separation of the state power of the member states and of the federation, also their exercise should be personally separated. A provision is then joined to this paragraph and says that nobody is allowed to be member of both chambers which is common and obvious provision of constitutions of all states whose parliament has two chambers.

The second paragraph establishes a principle of independence of the deputy. According to it, the deputy of the federal parliament may not vote in compliance with instructions of someone else. He must vote in person as well, not by proxy. For a specific deputy was elected (or appointed) and only he has his responsibility for the voting process, not someone else. Apart from this instruction of personal voting my suggestion stipulates three guidelines which the deputy shall follow in voting. These are own conscience, conformity with the constitution of the Union and interest of the people which he represents. Only the first is relatively common in constitutions, namely emphasis on voting according to conscience of the deputy though simple prohibition of giving instructions to the deputy mostly occurs. Much less widespread is a demand that voting of the deputy is in conformity with the constitution – it is probably regarded self-evident and it has been relied on possible correction in the form of constitutional judiciary. But I hold it important because the constitution (according to my suggestion) determines in the section of the basic rights but also in other its parts ground delimitation how the society of the European Union should be organized and what values should follow. And the deputies of the parliament should embody these values in individual concrete laws. The last of guidelines for voting, interests of the represented people, is the most unusual and is not commonly present in constitutions. But it is utterly logical provision – for there are only few other ways how to ensure that elected deputies keep what they promised when they were candidates. The deputies were above all elected just for that purpose that they represent the people and its interests. If the deputies voted without regard to the people that voted them, we could directly manage entirely without elected deputies. Finally, the last sentence of this paragraph says that every member of the Assembly of the Union has one vote which expresses equality of all deputies.

The following two paragraphs protect – as is usual in constitutions – elected deputies from unjustified persecution that would be a pretext for exercise the function of a deputy impossible. The first paragraph says that no deputy may be persecuted for speeches or voting made by exercise of his mandate. The opposite naturally would make to represent certain opinion of the people inconvenient to certain powerful group impossible, on the other hand this provision makes not possible to enforce that a deputy really represents the people that elected him – those are two conflicting demands, but the first one is more important; besides, the people can secure its interests otherwise than through the deputies as I will write about it later.

The second paragraph then speaks about prosecution of a deputy for other acts than attitudes in the precinct of the parliament. It says that a deputy can be taken into custody only if he is committing a criminal offence or immediately after, otherwise he can be prosecuted only with consent of the chamber of which he is a member; the respective chamber also can postpone prosecution of the representative to the time of expiring of his mandate. All of these are provisions by whose constitutions commonly protect deputies of parliaments from unjustified prosecution.

The next my provision refers to pays of deputies of the parliament that they should obtain from the means of the Union. It is necessary from several reasons. It has been known already from the antiquity that if political activity shall be paid from own resources, only who can afford it will participate in it which goes against the principle of equity of access to elective functions as it is written in the suggestion of the second chapter of this constitution. The second reason is just the words “from the means of the Union”, because it is necessary that no deputy accepts any means (except for his regular pay) from somebody and is therefore not dependent on him. And in order that it is prevented my suggestion contains one more sentence saying that accepting other rewards is unacceptable.

Two paragraphs delimit the time of the deputy's mandate. The first is very brief, contains only one sentence saying that the mandate of the deputy is effective upon his election. The second paragraph enumerates circumstances of the end of the deputy's mandate; but I inserted before it a paragraph concerning the oath of a newly elected deputy. According to it, the new deputy must in the first sitting of his chamber in which he will take part swear an oath whose reading I directly wrote in my proposal and which is: “I, … (name of the person), hereby pledge to work for welfare of the people of the European Union, to represent it in accordance with my best conscience and to fulfill the spirit of the constitution of the Union.” I tried that all what I described above as guidelines for decision-making of the deputy is expressed in it.

So now is turn of the paragraph describing the end of the deputy's mandate. Some mentioned circumstances are obvious such as expiration of the term of mandate or death. Also an obstacle in the form of exercising an incompatible function as the first paragraph (of the proposal) mentioned above speaks about is logical. I added also words about refusing to take the oath or taking it with reservations so that the oath is not mere formality without significance; it is common practice by the way. Finally, I add one more way of ending the deputy's mandate that on the contrary is not a common practice (at least in Europe), namely recall election. For the people has to have the right to remove its representatives, I wrote about it in the post about political rights.

The last but one, the ninth paragraph of my proposal determines the right of the deputies to the so called interpellation, parliamentary question of representatives of the executive power of the federation. It is one (though not mighty one) possibility of control of the executive power by the legislative power. According to my suggestion every member of the Assembly of the Union shall have this right towards the representatives of the executive power (members of the Council of Chancellors – I will speak about this terminology later in a respective post) shall have obligation by words or in writing answer within 30 days (longer period of time would be in my opinion too excessive).

Because it is impossible to include entirely all duties and rights of the member of parliament, the last paragraph of this article says that details are stipulated by a separate law.