The parliamentarian committees

1. Specialized committees

The specialized parliamentary committees are in charge of the government’s draft decrees and of the parliamentarians’ decree proposals. In other words, when a decree text is submitted to a specialized committee, the latter will have to:

• examine the authors’ motives,
• analyse every article of the submitted text,
• ask for the advice of every parliamentary group and if necessary of the government,
• if needed be, give the floor to the ministry’s or external experts,
• analyse the amendment movements,
• adopt a decree that possibly takes the amendment movements into account,
• submit a report on the deliberations of the committee to the plenary session of the Parliament and simultaneously to recommend whether to adopt the proposed text at the plenary session as well as the form in which it will be adopted.

It is obvious that the plenary session takes the final decision concerning the draft decree or the decree proposal. 

The same goes for the procedure of draft resolutions and of the expert’s report.

The specialized committees of the Parliament of the German-speaking Community are renewed at the beginning of every legislative period. The sessions of the specialized committees are usually not public.

At the moment, the Parliament of the German-speaking Community has four specialized committees:

• the committee of the general policy, the local authorities, the petitions, the public funds and the cooperation,
• the committee of culture,
• the committee of school-teaching and education,
• the committee of health, employment and social matters.

2. Extraordinary committees

At any time, the parliament can resort to extraordinary committees focused on a specific matter within an allotted time in order to present a report afterwards. For example, there was an extraordinary committee concerning the use of languages in school-teaching during the legislative period 1995-1999 and 2000-2004.

The extraordinary committees work in the same way as the specialized committees.

3. Committees of inquiry

The Parliament of the German-speaking Community can resort to committees of inquiry for instance when facts or presumptions indicate that processes may have been carried out against the law or the rules within the competencies of the Community or within communitarian institutions.

The decree of 17th January 1994 regulates the job of the committees of inquiry.

Until today, there have been committees of inquiry at the Parliament because of a phone tapping business, misappropriation of subsidies and the non-profit making Hermann-Niermann-foundation.