Items of Business in the National Council – Legal Framework
The National Council Rules of Procedure Act defines the framework for the practical work of the National Council, and lays down the rules of the game, as it were. The act contains a detailed list of the items of business that can be dealt with by the National Council. Apart from bills, this includes motions for resolution, state treaties, questions and answers to them, reports by the government, by the Court of Audit and by the Ombudsman Board, petitions and citizens’ initiatives, statements by members of the Federal Government, stenographic records of hearings, and objections raised by the Federal Council.
Bills may be submitted by the representatives themselves, the government, the Federal Council, the committees of the National Council, or by the Austrian people themselves in the form of popular initiatives.
With very few exceptions, the items of business take the form of written documents, which are usually distributed to the representatives and published as annexes to the stenographic records. With the exception of petitions and citizens’ initiatives, the items of business are held to be part of the deliberations in public sittings of the National Council. This means that they enjoy “factual immunity”, i.e. that nobody shall be held liable, especially under criminal law, for publishing true accounts of them.
