In 2024 the French National Assembly initiated a trial period during which the country’s prime minister would answer questions in parliament alone, rather than together with their ministers, in a format similar to Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) in the House of Commons. In this post, Calixte Bloquet and Ruxandra Serban explain why French politicians decided to go ahead with the experiment, and how the format of the French version of PMQs compares to similar procedures in other parliaments. A second post will then discuss how the trial went, and what can be learned from it.

In April 2024, at the initiative of the Speaker, the Bureau of the French National Assembly – the collegiate authority responsible for the internal functioning of the chamber – decided to experiment for a few weeks with a Prime Minister’s Question Time, inspired by the iconic procedure of the UK House of Commons. In September 2024, the Bureau declared that the experiment would not continue and that questions to the government would return to their traditional format. What happened in between, and did the experiment produce disappointing results? This short-lived attempt is an opportunity to look at parliamentary questioning and the different goals it can be used to achieve, as well as to explore the complicated politics of parliamentary reform.

Why the change of procedure?

How can oversight be made fun for MPs? This question has been an issue in the French National Assembly for many years. Created as a regular weekly session in 1974 and broadcast live on public television, oral questions to the government have long been the most visible part of parliamentary work for French citizens. In 1995 it was turned into two one-hour sessions a week, on Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 3pm. During these sessions, MPs from both the majority and the opposition parties could put questions to any minister, often leading to lively exchanges. Traditionally, the Prime Minister would answer the questions from opposition party leaders, and occasionally from majority backbenchers. Over time, however, the whole exercise became predictable, to the point of being described as ‘sclerotic’. The attendance of MPs declined. In 2019, in an attempt to renew the procedure and bring more structure to the parliamentary week, the two sittings were merged into one, lasting two hours and taking place on Tuesdays at 3pm. The number of questions was also distributed differently, with the opposition asking at least half of the total, and the possibility was introduced for MPs to reply to the minister if they had not used up their two minutes of speaking time, to encourage shorter questions and to make the exchange more dynamic and spontaneous.

But it did not work. Quite the contrary, the reform seemed to make matters worse, as many participants felt that the two-hour session was too long, leading to repetitive questions and lower-than-ever attendance by MPs. In the meantime, however, the Senate had moved its weekly question time to the Wednesday 3pm slot left vacant by the National Assembly, making a return to the previous formula impossible, as ministers cannot be expected to be in two places at once. A solution was found in late 2023, when the two-hour session was split again (1 hour 15 minutes on Tuesdays at 3pm and 45 minutes on Wednesdays at 2pm) to allow ministers a 15-minute commute between the two chambers. This improved attendance somewhat; but too early, too rushed and conflicting with other commitments, the Wednesday session remained a problem.

It was in this context that the 2024 experiment was formulated. In the National Assembly, the Bureau, composed of 22 elected members, gets to decide on the internal functioning and rules of the chamber. At its head, the Speaker, elected from the majority party, came up with the idea to devote the Wednesday session exclusively to questions to the Prime Minister, while keeping the Tuesday session for questions to the government as a whole, including the Prime Minister. The aim was to raise the political stakes of the session by giving MPs the opportunity to rattle the Prime Minister directly, rather than ministers. The timing of the session allowed for exactly one question per party group, regardless of its size (and a total of 10 questions, for 45 minutes), with the aim of making the session efficient and focused.

The idea of a Prime Minister’s Question Time had been mooted before, in 2022 and 2023, but never gained traction. One of the reasons for this was probably the personality of the previous Prime Minister. Elisabeth Borne never liked public speaking and was not much of an improviser, but Gabriel Attal, who became Prime Minister in January 2024, was much more comfortable responding to questions. The spring of 2024 was also occupied by the campaign for the European Parliament elections, so all parties were more likely to be interested in opportunities to campaign in the spotlight. Nevertheless, the idea was not necessarily popular, even among the majority parties. The two junior partners in the government’s unofficial coalition, MoDem and Horizons, opposed the procedure, speaking of a ‘very vertical’ concept of power that would ‘limit the ability of MPs to question ministers’, and expressing concern that the Prime Minister’s reputation and credibility could quickly be eroded by constant questioning. Meanwhile, the left-wing opposition strongly condemned a procedure that would give the Prime Minister more speaking time and ultimately become an election platform. The compromise was therefore to introduce the procedure as a temporary experiment – for just a few sessions, in April and May – to be evaluated later. This period ran up to the European Parliament elections and President Emmanuel Macron’s subsequent decision to dissolve the National Assembly.

How does the French PMQ experiment compare with how prime ministers are questioned in other parliaments?

Democracies that have either a parliamentary or a semi-presidential constitution (i.e. one in which the government requires the confidence of the legislature) usually provide a mechanism for the head of government to be questioned by parliamentarians. In most parliaments, this is done through a ‘collective’ plenary questioning procedure: the prime minister may be questioned in the parliament chamber at the same time as other ministers. This is also the type of questioning model that was in place in the National Assembly until the 2024 experiment. The other type of questioning model found in a small number of democracies involves ‘individualised’ plenary questioning: the prime minister is dedicated a specific questioning slot, and questioned on their own. This type of questioning model is famously found in the UK House of Commons: Prime Minister’s Questions. A few other parliaments provide a form of individualised questioning, for example the Irish Dáil, which operates two individualised questioning procedures: Oral Questions to the Taoiseach, and Leaders’ Questions.

The British model is known for the theatrical and adversarial style of questions and answers, but is also seen as a way to make the head of government more directly accountable to parliament. As a result, this type of procedure has also occasionally been adopted in other democracies. For example, the Norwegian parliament normally operates a collective Question Time that allows parliamentarians to question ministers in the plenary and introduced a monthly ‘Prime Minister’s Question Hour’, when the Prime Minister answers questions alone. The most notable recent example is Canada, where the House of Commons also traditionally had a collective questioning procedure: the prime minister was questioned together with ministers at the daily Question Period. In 2017, following a promise made in the 2015 election campaign, PM Justin Trudeau started answering all questions on Wednesdays, effectively introducing a new ‘Prime Minister’s Question Period’. The French experiment falls into the same category: a parliament normally operating collective questioning of the Prime Minister, where an attempt is made to make questioning more relevant and attractive by moving to the individualised model. Parliaments often use a ‘trial period’ to assess whether new procedures might work. The UK’s Prime Minister’s Questions was also trialled between July-October 1961, before being permanently introduced in November 1961.

In the next post in this two-part series the authors will explore what happened during the French experiment with Prime Minister’s Questions in May and June 2024, and explain why it failed to be adopted as a permanent procedure.

About the authors

Calixte Bloquet is a research associate at the Institute for Parliamentary Research (IParl – Berlin) and an associate member of the CESSP (Paris). 

Ruxandra Serban is a Lecturer (Teaching) in Comparative Politics in the Department of Political Science at UCL.

Featured image: National Assembly (CC BY 2.0) by Francisco Anzola.