Chamber of Deputies

The Conference of Group Chairpersons is chaired by the President of the Chamber and is composed of the Chairpersons of all Parliamentary Groups. The Government is always informed of the meetings of the Conference so that it may send its representative (Rule 13, paragraph 1).

According to the Rules of Procedure, the Vice-Presidents of the Chamber and the Chair­persons of the Parliamentary Committees may also be invited to the Conference. When so required by the exceptional importance of the matters to be examined, the President may also invite one representative for each of the political groupings of the Mixed Group consisting of at least ten Deputies, as well as one representative of the Deputies belonging to the linguistic minorities (Rule 13, paragraph 2).

Functions

The Conference of Group Chairpersons shall be convened by the President of the Chamber whenever he/she deems it appropriate, or at the request of the Government or of a Group Chairperson, to consider the business of the Plenary and the Committees (Rule 13, paragraph 1).

The Conference is responsible for planning the Chamber's business by drawing up the programme and order of business of the Plenary (Rules 23 and 24). The President of the Chamber may also convene a preliminary Conference of the Chairpersons of the Standing Committees.

The Conference also deliberates on requests for declarations of urgency relating to bills (Rule 69); on the time limit requested by the Government for the Plenary to conclude consideration of bills related to public finance measures (Rule 123-bis); or else on setting a new time limit for the presentation of a Committee's report on bills included in the programme of business of the Plenary, if the Government has not provided the data and information requested by the said Committee within the set timing (Rule 79, paragraph 7).