This presentation shows you the amending procedure of the constitution in SWITZERLAND, UNITED KINGDOM AND FRANCE with in depth knowledge about it..

1. SWITZERLAND

2. AMENDMENT PROCEDURE
• The amendment procedure of Swiss Constituion is classified into two
distinct methods
METHOD 1: PROCESS OF TOTAL REVISION OF THE CONSTITUTION :
A total revision of the constitution means the adoption of a new or totally
revised Constitution.
Total revision can be affected in any of the following three possible ways:
1: If the federal parliament by an approval of each of its two houses, passes a
new draft for a total revision of the constitution a referendum is held.
If the new draft gets the approval of the majority of the voters as well as
of the cantons ,it comes into operation. Rejection in the referendum by
the voters or by the cantons or by both, finally rejects the new draft and
the old constitution continues to operate.

3. • 2: If one house of the federal parliament approves the draft for the total revision
of the constitution but the other house rejects it, the issue is submitted to the
people in a referendum. If the majority of the Swiss voters approves the proposal,
the federal parliament is dissolved. Fresh elections are held.
• Thereafter, a new federal parliament is constituted. It prepares and approves a
draft of a revised constitution. The same is the submitted to a referendum. If in
this second referendum the new constitution is approved by both the majority of
the Swiss voters as well as the cantons, the old constitution ceases to operate and
the new constitution comes into operation.
• 3: The proposal for a total revision of the constitution can also comes through an
initiatives. If 1,00,000 of the Swiss voters submit a proposal for a total revision of
the constitution, the proposal is submitted to the people in a referendum. In case
the proposal is supported by the majority of voters, the federal parliament then
prepares a new constitution and it is put before the people in a referendum. If the
new constitution is approved both by the majority of voters as well as the cantons
it becomes operative and replaces the old constitution.

4. • After the successful total revision of the 1848 constitution in 1874, three
unsuccessful attempts at total revision of the constitution were made in 1880,
1935 and 1975. However, the attempt made in 1998- 1999 approve to be
successful.
• Draft of a total revision of the constitution was adopted by the federal parliament
of 18th December 1988, it was adopted by a majority of the people and the
cantons in a referendum on 18th April, 1999. The federal parliament issued a
decree for its enforcement on 28th September ,1999 and a new constitution came
into operation which came into effect 1st January ,2000.

5. METHOD 2: PROCESS OF PARTIAL REVISION OR
AMENDMENT OF THE CONSTITUTION:
• A partial revision or an amendment of the constitution can be initiated and
adopted in two ways:
• 1: A proposal for a partial revision of the constitution can be made by the two
houses of the federal parliament. Thereafter, the proposal is submitted to the
people in a referendum. If the majority of the people as well as the cantons
approves the proposal, the amendment gets incorporated in the constitution.
• 2: The proposal for a partial revision of the constitution can also come from the
people. If 1,00,000 of the Swiss voters submit a general proposal for a partial
amendment of the constitution, the same is put before the people in a
referendum. If it gets the approval of the majority of voters, the federal parliament
drafts the amendment of the basis of the general proposal made by people
through an initiative.

6. • This draft is then submitted to the people in a referendum. If the majority
of the both Swiss voters and the cantons approve it, the amendment gets
incorporated in the constitution however if the initiative for a partial
revision, as made by 1,00,000 Swiss voters, is made in the form of a
complete draft, the draft is discussed by the federal parliament.
• The federal parliament gives its verdict either in its favour or against the
proposed partial revision, in either case, the draft is submitted to the
people in a referendum. If it is approved by a majority of both the people
and the cantons, the amendment gets incorporated in the constitution.
• From the above account, it is clear that the process of amendment of the
Swiss constitution is difficult, cumbersome and complicated. It gets
completed in two stages: Proposal Stage and Approval Stage. The proposal
can come either from the Federal Parliament or through a popular
Initiative by 1,00,000 Swiss voters.

7. • At the approval stage the amendment proposal has to get the approval of the
majority of both the Swiss voters as well as of the Swiss cantons. However in
actual practice, the process has proved to be neither very rigid nor very
complicated. Some eighty partial amendments were successfully incorporated
between 1874-1999.
• In 1999, the Swiss constitution was totally revised and consolidated by
incorporating all the amendments made during 1874 – 1999 as well as by
adding a bill of rights social goals , more detailed description of the powers of
the federation and the principles governing relation between the federal and
cantons.
• The Swiss constitution has now 196 Articles while before this total revision it
had only 123 Articles. The maturity of the Swiss voters and the convention of
working through a general consensus has softened in actual practice the
rigidity of the formal process of amendment of the constitution.
• The most salient feature that makes the amendment process very distinctive
the fact is that no amendment, total or partial, can be made in the
constitution without the approval of the majority of the people as well as of
the cantons. A canton is deemed to have approved the amendment if the
majority of the people of that canton approve the amendment.

8. UNITED
KINGDOM

9. • 1: In the UK there has never been a clear, comprehensive procedure or
procedures for amending the constitution. This omission has come
about both because there is no written constitution to specify
definitively and with authority what the procedure is; and because, even
to the extent that procedures exist, the lack of an agreed definition of
the constitution makes it difficult to agree whether or not it is being
changed in any given circumstance, and consequently whether the
procedures should be used.
• The UK constitution, rather than being codified in a document or group
of documents, is derived from many sources, including statute;
conventions; doctrines; and the royal prerogative. Even the views of
constitutional observers can be regarded as a constitutional source.
Moreover, the nature of each of these different sources changes in
different ways over time.
• Probably the most prominent means by which constitutional change
comes about is through legislation in the UK parliament. According to
traditional accounts of the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty, any act
of parliament, whether fundamental to the constitutional settlement or
relatively trivial, can be overturned by the same legislative process; and
no binding procedure can be applied to entrench constitutional law.

10. • There is no official category of constitutional legislation. But a
new legal principle has begun to develop. Some constitutional
enactments have come to be protected from implied repeal
by subsequent acts of parliament. That is to say, parliament
can only alter them if it expressly says that it intends to do so,
rather than simply as an indirect consequence of legislation it
produces.

11. Amending procedure
Parliamentary stages
• Most bills can begin either in the House of Commons
or in the House of Lords. The Government will make
this decision based on the need to make sure each
House has a balanced programme of legislation to
consider each session. However, certain bills must start
in the Commons, such as a bill whose main aim is the
imposition of taxation. Bills of major constitutional
importance also conventionally start in the commons
• Most bills will need to go through the following stages
in each house before becoming law.

12. First Reading
• This is a purely formal stage, and there is no
debate on the bill.
Second Reading
• This is a debate on the main principles of the bill,
held in the chamber. A government minister will
open the debate by setting out the case for the
bill and explaining its provisions. The Opposition
will respond and then other members are free to
discuss it.

13. • . The Government will enclose the debate by
responding to the points made. No
amendments can be made to the text of the
Bill at this stage, although members may give
an idea of the changes they will be proposing
at later stages. At the end of the debate the
House will vote on the Bill. If the vote is lost by
the Government, the Bill cannot proceed any
further, though it is rare for a Government Bill
to be defeated at this stage.

14. Committee Stage
• This is a line by line consideration of the detail
of the Bill in the Commons this process may
be carried out by a specially convened
committee of MPs that reflects the strength of
the parties in the house as a whole.
Alternatively committee stage may be taken in
the chamber. In the Lords the committee
stage will take place in the chamber or
elsewhere in the Palace of Westminster either
way any peer can participate.

15. • A public Bill Committee in the Commons can take oral
and written evidence on the Bill. In either House the
Committee will decide whether each clause of the bill
should remain in it, and will consider any amendments
tabled by the Government or other members.
• The amendments tabled may propose changes to the
existing provisions of the Bill or may involve adding
wholly new material. However , there are limits to
what can be added to a particular Bill, as the
amendments must be sufficiently close to its subject
matter when introduced.

16. • Government amendments to Bills may be
changes to make sure the bills work as intended,
may give effect to new policy or may be
concessionary amendments to ease the handling
of the bill. Amendments in the last category will
respond to points made at an earlier stage or will
have been tabled to avoid a government defeat at
the stage in question. Unless the amendments
are purely technical in their effect , they will need
the agreement of PBL Committee before tabling,
and substantial changes in policy will need policy
clearance too.

17. Report Stage
• In both houses this stage takes place in the
chamber. Only amendments are discussed, so
if none are tabled this will be a purely formal
stage. As in Committee the amendments may
change what is in the bill already or may
involve new provisions being added.
• Report stage is also referred to as
consideration in the commons.

18. Third Reading
• In the Commons this another general
discussion of the Bill which invariably takes
place immediately after report. No
amendments are possible. In the Lords, Third
Reading will take place on a later day, and
tidying up amendments can be tabled.

19. Later stages
• Both Houses must agree on the text of a Bill before it can
become an Act. This means that if the Bill is amended in
the second House, it must return to the the first House for
those amendments to be considered. The first House can
reject the amendments, make changes to them or suggest
alternatives.
• This time taken to go through all these stages depends on
the length of the Bill, how controversial it is and whether it
needs to be passed particularly quickly. An emergency Bill
may be passed in a matter of days, whereas a larger Bill
may be introduced at the beginning of the session and only
passed at the end a year later.

20. Royal Assent and beyond
• A Bill that has been passed by both Houses becomes
law once it has been given Royal Assent and this has
been signified to parliament. It will then become an
Act. Even then the Act may not have any practical
effect until later on. Most provisions in an Act will
either come into operation within a set period after
Royal Assent or at a time fixed by the government. This
gives the government and those people who are
directly affected by the Act time to plan accordingly.
The government may need to fill in some of the details
of the new scheme by making orders or regulations
under powers contained in the Act, for example to deal
with procedural matters.

21. • Three to five years after a Bill has been
passed, the department responsible for an Act
will normally review how it has worked in
practice and submit an assessment of this to
the relevant Commons departmental
committee. The committee will then decide
whether it wants to carry out a fuller post
legislative enquiry into the Act.

22. Extra information
• Alongside this apparent legal change, certain regulations and practices exist within
parliament and government in relation to legislative constitutional change. The
Parliament Act 1911 removed the ultimate veto of the House of Lords when faced by
a determined majority in the House of Commons, except in relation to extensions of
the life of a parliament beyond five years, which the Lords remains able to block
absolutely. In this sense, there is a special amendment procedure applied to the
length of a parliament, which is thereby constitutionally entrenched.
• In the post-Second World War period a convention has operated that bills of 'first
class constitutional importance’ should be sent to a committee of the whole house in
the Commons. There is however no clarity about how such bills should be defined.
Matthew Flinders has noted that it is puzzling, for instance, that the bills that became
the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
• A range of parliamentary committees can also play a part in considering legislative
constitutional change. Relatively recent innovations in the period covered by this
Audit include the House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution.

23. • The holding of referendums has come to play an increasingly important part in
constitutional legislative change. Sometimes legislation is introduced after
consultative referendums, as with devolution in the late 1990s. An emerging
tendency is for legislation providing for referendums to specify that the results of
these plebiscites will be As noted above, legislation is not the only component of
the constitution, and legislative change is not the only form of constitutional
amendment.
• Procedures applying to changes to these other portions of the constitution are
even harder to discern and often less stringent than those involving legislative
alteration. Changes can come about through judicial decisions, for instance when a
court determines whether or not a particular royal prerogative power exists, or
interprets constitutional legislation. Conventions - which are often vaguely defined
rules and not directly legally enforceable can seemingly be changed by
precedents, that is actions by constitutional players in response to particular
circumstances.

24. • These precedents can either develop the understanding of a
particular convention, or render it redundant. Increasingly,
conventions are being written down in official but non-
statutory , publically available code. Finally , it is not entirely
clear how constitution doctrines such as parliamentary
sovereignty can fundamentally be changed at all.

25. FRANCE

26. • In France, the French Constitution of october 4th 1958 was
revised many times in its early years. Changes in this
fundamental law have become more frequent since the
1990s.
• There are two methods to amend:
1. The right of initiative for the revision of the constitution can
come either from President of the republic on the proposal of
the Prime minister .
2. From private member of the parliament

27. • Other ways to amend
• Since the beginning of the French Fifth Republic, revisions
have been adopted without using section 89.
• The Constitutional Act of June 4, 1960 was adopted by a
parliamentary vote according to original article 85 of the
Constitution, which involved the Senate of the Community.
• The Constitutional Act of November 6, 1962 was adopted,
without any parliamentary procedure, through direct
referendum by Article 11 of the French constitution. The
use of this procedure to revise the Constitution has been
strongly criticized, as the article text does not explicitly
provide that it can be used to revise the Constitution.

28. • The project or the proposed revision should be passed
by both houses with identical terms. The review is final
after being approved by referendum.
• However, the proposed revision is not submitted to
referendum if the President of the Republic decides to
submit it to Parliament convened in Congress; in this
case, the proposed revision is approved only if it
receives three-fifths majority of the votes cast.
• No revision procedure may be commenced or
continued which jeopardizes the integrity of the
territory.
• The republican form of government can not be revised.

29. • There are certain other ambiguities as well in
the amending procedure. Article 89 does not
say anything regarding the voting of a
proposal for revision. Article 126 of the
standing orders , however makes it legal that
the ordinary legislative procedure is to be
used that is a simple majority is required for
an amendment to pass in both the house of
the parliament.