The thesis compares the role of parliament in the system of separation of powers in France and Slovenia and asks how the conception of the separation of powers shapes the formal competences and the actual power of parliament. The French Constitution of 1958, in the understanding of its drafters, proceeds from a single power divided by functions and designs parliament as an instrument of governing. The Slovenian Constitution of 1991 proceeds from the protection of the individual against the state and reserves to the National Assembly the determination of rights and obligations. The two systems are compared by five criteria derived from the theory of the separation of powers.
The Slovenian legislature has more extensive competences by constitutional design. As long as the government commands a majority, the actual position of the two parliaments is similar, because it is determined by the majority and not by legal competence. Without a government majority the National Assembly is in practice stronger in deciding and the French Assemblée nationale in rejecting, because the French government retains the means written into the constitution while the Slovenian government retains none. The Constitutional Court has more extensive competences over the National Assembly than the Conseil constitutionnel over the French parliament, because the republican conception of statute ties constitutional review to referral and the protection of rights, whereas the protective conception makes the Constitutional Court the last guardian of rights also against the legislature. The conception of the separation of powers thus determines what the constitution reserves to parliament, while the party composition determines whether parliament actually uses these competences.
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