**An Exposition of the Reasons for the Provisions Governing the Annual Session Dedicated to the Discussion and Evaluation of Public Policies**
In accordance with the royal directives, notably on the occasion of the opening of the first session of the second legislative year of the ninth legislature on October 12, 2012, where His Majesty stated: "In order to deepen the role of Parliament in the field of State oversight, it has been constitutionally strengthened, so that it assumes the mission of evaluating public policies. This opens promising perspectives regarding the possibility of making appropriate and necessary adjustments to programs, in a timely manner, to ensure their proper functioning and success.
Considering that parliamentary competence in the field of discussing and evaluating public policies constitutes one of the significant developments mentioned in the 2011 Constitution, which indicates the ongoing functional evolution in national parliamentary affairs, based on a constitutional vision that aims to renew while preserving achievements and constants, in order to make the parliamentary institution a key actor in overseeing the state management system.
And in accordance with the constitutive nature of the current mandate, which will inevitably contribute to the consolidation of rules and procedures for introducing all constitutional parliamentary developments, the House of Councillors has taken the initiative to prepare this memorandum to facilitate the readability of the provisions framed for the annual session dedicated to discussing and evaluating public policies, to ensure a parliamentary application based on the fundamentally constitutional requirement, which is quality in evaluation and the proposal of strategic alternatives as a goal.
**Legal Basis**:
- Constitution: Article 70, paragraph 2; Article 101, paragraph 2;
- Internal Regulations of the House of Councillors: Articles 264 to 269;
- Internal Regulations of the House of Representatives: Articles 211 to 217;
- Relevant decisions of the Constitutional Council.
**Idiomatic Semantics**:
- **Public Policies**: The set of coordinated actions carried out by the government and public administrations aimed at improving the conditions of individuals within the state.
- **Parliamentary Evaluation**: Extrapolating the effectiveness of public policies by balancing objectives, the means implemented, and the results obtained.
- **Thematic Groups**: Temporary mini-committees composed of representatives from all political components of the Council, limited to twenty members, and functionally specialized in the measures provided by the internal regulations of the House of Councillors to prepare an integrated report on a specific public policy.
**Activation Procedures**:
1. **Proposal Phase**:
- Correspondence addressed to parliamentary teams and groups by the President of the Assembly, based on the deliberations of the Bureau, to propose public policies to be evaluated by the House of Councillors at the beginning of the October session of each legislative year;
- The Bureau defines issues of coordination and integration with the House of Representatives;
- Inform the Prime Minister.
2. **Preparation Phase**:
- Creation of temporary thematic groups under the supervision of the Bureau, composed of at least one representative from all factions and parliamentary groups as needed, with members ranging from 10 to 20;
- Structuring these groups with an approach that considers the rights of the opposition;
- The thematic groups prepare a note on the policies to be evaluated, the questions and analyses to be obtained, and transmit it to the President for transmission to an independent constitutional institution based on the deliberations of the Bureau;
- The right of the head of the thematic working group, through the Bureau of the Council, to request a meeting of the permanent committee(s) concerned with the subject of the public policy to be evaluated, in the presence of ministers or heads of departments, institutions, and public enterprises, as well as to request them to undertake a reconnaissance or information mission;
- The possibility for the government to attend the meetings of the thematic working groups;
- Completing the work of the temporary thematic groups by submitting their reports to the Bureau of the House of Councillors, which distributes them to the members of the Council at least two weeks before the annual plenary sessions.
3. **Discussion Phase**:
- The President of the House of Councillors, during the first half of the April session, in agreement with the President of the House of Representatives and based on the deliberations of each House's bureau separately, sets the date for the annual session dedicated to examining and evaluating the public policies listed on each House's agenda;
- Holding plenary sessions in each house separately during the same agreed period;
- The Bureau of the House of Councillors presents the reports of the temporary thematic groups to the plenary session and organizes the discussion through the Conference of Presidents;
- Giving the floor in plenary to the groups and parliamentary teams, the government, and then to the groups and parliamentary teams again;
- Recording the debates of the session in a report containing the facts of the discussion, with a copy sent to the Prime Minister and the President of the House of Representatives.