Monaco's government: a law needs two wills to agree

What a Monegasque law needs before it exists

Article 66 of the constitution defines a law in one line: it "implique l'accord des volontés du Prince et du Conseil National", the agreement of the prince's will and the National Council's. The same article then divides the work. Initiative belongs to the prince. Deliberation and the vote belong to the council. Sanction returns to the prince, who gives a law binding force by promulgating it, and under Article 69 it binds third parties from the day after it appears in the Journal de Monaco.

A government bill follows a fixed route. The Council of Government drafts it, the Minister of State presents it to the prince under his own signature, and once the prince has signed it the minister lays it before the council. The council's own way in is narrower and slower. It may pass a proposition de loi, and the Minister of State then has six months to answer in one of two ways: turn the proposal, amended if the government wishes, into a government bill and table it within a further year, or announce that the procedure is closed, in a statement placed on the agenda of a public sitting where it may be debated. Silence works in the council's favour. A proposal left unanswered for six months becomes a bill by operation of law, and so does one whose promised bill is still untabled when the year runs out.

That machinery is younger than the constitution. The revision of 2 April 2002 was carried through to prepare membership of the Council of Europe, and the government's own account of it says legislative initiative was "better asserted" and the council gained a right to amend government bills. Amendments must bear a direct link to the rest of the bill, and the government may still withdraw a bill before the final vote. Two kinds of bill are closed to amendment altogether: those authorising the ratification of a treaty, and the budget.

Constitutional change runs on the same two-will rule. Article 94 makes any revision, total or partial, subject to the "commun accord" of the prince and the council. Where the council takes the initiative, Article 95 requires a vote of two-thirds of its normal membership, which with 24 seats means 16 members. Article 93 adds that the constitution cannot be suspended by any measure at all.

Why the government answers to the prince alone

Article 3 places executive power under "la haute autorité du Prince", and Article 43 hands its exercise to a Minister of State assisted by a Council of Government. The Minister of State represents the prince, directs the executive services, commands the public force and holds the casting vote in the Council of Government, which Wikipedia counts as the minister and five other members. Article 50 settles accountability in a single sentence: the Minister of State and the government councillors are responsible to the prince for the administration of the principality.

The constitution contains no motion of censure and no vote of confidence. Ministers have reserved places at the council's sittings and must be heard when they ask to speak, under Article 65, and the prince addresses the council by messages the Minister of State reads aloud. Communication between prince and council passes through the minister both ways.

Who may hold the office has changed. Until the 2002 revision the Minister of State was a French citizen, chosen by the prince from candidates proposed by the French government. Since then the holder may be French or Monegasque, and Wikipedia records that the prince consults the French government before making the appointment. Britannica's account still describes a minister "who must be a French citizen", which is the rule as it stood before 2002.

The prince's control reaches well past the appointment. Sovereign Ordinances are deliberated in the Council of Government and take force only with his signature. Ministerial arrêtés are signed by the Minister of State, sent to the prince within 24 hours, and become enforceable only if he raises no express objection within ten days, unless he has waived that right for a category of them. The minutes of every Council of Government meeting record how each member voted and reach the prince within five days, and he may oppose its decisions on the same terms. Some ordinances skip the Council of Government entirely: those on the sovereign family and its members, on judicial services, on the appointment of diplomats, ministers and magistrates, and the one that dissolves the National Council.

Who votes for Monaco's National Council

Article 53 gives the vote to citizens of Monegasque nationality of either sex aged at least 18. To stand for election a voter must be 25 and must have held the nationality for at least five years. Communal elections use the same franchise with a lower age to stand, 21. Article 32 grants foreigners every public and private right "qui ne sont pas formellement réservés aux nationaux", and the vote is one of the rights reserved.

That rule decides who the electorate is, because Monegasques are a minority of the people who live under the laws the council passes. Wikipedia gives Monegasques as 24.1% of residents in 2024, French nationals as 21.8% and Italians as 19.5%, with British, Swiss, Russian, Belgian and German nationals after them. Britannica puts the share claiming Monegasque descent at about one-fifth. The record counts 38,857 residents on 1 January 2025. Wikipedia notes that Monaco does not allow dual citizenship.

Entry to the electorate is itself a prince's prerogative. Article 15 gives him the right of naturalisation and of reinstatement in the nationality, exercised after the Crown Council has been consulted, and Article 77 makes that consultation compulsory. Naturalisation, one of the routes into the electorate, is therefore decided by the prince, whom the electorate does not elect.

The constitution writes the same line into social and economic rights. Article 25 guarantees Monegasques priority in access to public and private employment, under conditions set by law or by international agreement. Article 26 promises state aid to Monegasques in poverty, unemployment, sickness, invalidity, old age and maternity, and Article 27 promises them free primary and secondary education. Freedom of worship, of opinion, of association and of trade union action are stated for everyone.

The franchise has widened in stages. The act of 5 January 1911 had the council elected from among men of Monegasque nationality. The constitution of 1962 gave women the vote in all elections. The 2002 revision set the age of majority at 18, one of the changes the Council of Europe's recommendations called for before Monaco joined in 2004.

How Monaco's voting system turns votes into seats

The council's 24 members are elected for five years by direct universal suffrage, voting for lists. Wikipedia describes a mixed system in which 16 seats go by majority vote and 8 by proportional representation, and the majority half weighs far more in the result. At the 2013 election Horizon Monaco took 50.34% of the votes and 20 seats, while Union Monégasque took 38.99% and 3 seats.

The 2023 election went further. A single list formed from the three parties that had won seats in 2018 took nearly 90% of the vote and all 24 seats. New Ideas for Monaco, a centre-left party founded in 2022, ran candidates for 13 seats and took about 10%, which under the majority rule produced none.

Party membership works loosely by the standards of most European chambers. Wikipedia records that a Monegasque legislator may belong to more than one party at the same time, and that no party describing itself as left-wing is registered; of the three parties that combined in 2023, Union Monégasque was the one counted the most liberal.

The council's calendar is fixed by the constitution. It meets by right in two ordinary sessions a year, opening on the first working day of April and the first working day of October, and each may last up to three months. An extraordinary session can be called by the prince, or by the council's president at the request of two-thirds of the members. The council sets its own agenda and sends it to the Minister of State at least three days ahead, and at the government's request at least one sitting in two must go to bills the prince has tabled. Sittings are public unless two-thirds of those present vote to sit in private, and the record of public sittings is printed in the Journal de Monaco. The council's rules of procedure take effect only after the Supreme Tribunal has checked them against the constitution.

What the National Council can withhold

The budget is the council's heaviest instrument. Article 70 states that the council votes the budget and that no tax, direct or indirect, may be raised except by law; a treaty that would create one can be ratified only under a law. The government must present the budget bill before 30 September, and the council votes it during its October session, chapter by chapter, with transfers between chapters forbidden unless a law allows them. The expenses of the sovereign household and the palace are fixed in the same budget law and paid first out of general revenue.

The constitution also sets the limit of a refusal. If the credits are still unvoted on 31 December, Article 73 lets the prince open by Sovereign Ordinance, after hearing the Council of State, the credits for services already voted. A withheld budget therefore holds spending at the level the council approved before, and the state keeps running. Surpluses go into a constitutional reserve fund, and drawing on that fund to cover a deficit takes a law, which gives the council a say over the reserve as well as the annual accounts.

The budget is also where the two wills have broken down before. Britannica records that in 1959 the prince suspended part of the 1911 constitution and dissolved the National Council over a budget disagreement, and appointed a national assembly in its place in 1961. Monaco's history follows that dispute into the tax crisis with France and the 1962 constitution; the rule in Article 93 against suspension is the constitutional answer to it.

Treaties are the council's other lever. Article 14 has the prince sign and ratify treaties after consulting the Crown Council and send them to the council, through the Minister of State, before ratification. Four kinds need a law before they can be ratified: those that affect the constitutional organisation, those that would change existing legislation, those that bring Monaco into an international organisation in which members of the National Council take part, and those that create spending the budget law does not provide for. The government must also send the council a yearly report on foreign policy. Selling control of a company in which the state holds at least 50% needs a law as well, under Article 35.

Against all of this the prince holds dissolution. Under Article 74 he may dissolve the National Council after taking the Crown Council's advice, and new elections must follow within three months.

How the prince's advisory councils are made up

Two councils sit beside the prince and neither is elected. The Crown Council has seven members of Monegasque nationality, appointed by the prince for three years. He chooses its president and three others freely; the remaining three he appoints on the National Council's nomination, from outside its own ranks. It meets at least twice a year and must be consulted on treaties, on dissolving the National Council, on naturalisation and reinstatement, and on pardons and amnesties. Its advice is required and its opinion does not bind, except in the one case of an empty throne, where Article 10 has it designate a collateral heir on the concurring opinion of the Regency Council.

The Council of State gives its opinion on the bills and ordinances the prince submits to it, and may be consulted on anything else. Its organisation is set by Sovereign Ordinance, which leaves its composition in the prince's hands. A third body, the Commission Supérieure des Comptes, audits the management of public money under Article 42.

Who judges disputes over Monaco's constitution

Article 88 states that judicial power belongs to the prince, who delegates its full exercise to the courts and tribunals; justice is rendered in his name and the independence of judges is guaranteed. Britannica dates the French model of the courts to 1819 and the Supreme Tribunal, the highest judicial authority, to 1962.

The Supreme Tribunal has five full members and two alternates, all appointed by the prince from names put forward by other bodies. The National Council proposes one full member and one alternate, from outside its own ranks, and so does the Council of State. The Crown Council, the Court of Appeal and the Civil Court of First Instance each propose one full member. Every body submits two names for each seat, and the prince may ask for new names if he accepts none of them. He names the president directly.

In constitutional matters the tribunal rules on the National Council's rules of procedure and on claims that a right in Title III of the constitution has been infringed. In administrative matters it hears actions to annul decisions of the administration and the Sovereign Ordinances issued to apply laws, and it settles conflicts of jurisdiction between courts. Disputes over the conduct of elections go to the courts under Article 55.

The judges are largely French. Wikipedia states that the Judicial Court of Revision and the Supreme Tribunal are staffed by judges drawn from French courts, the French Conseil d'État and French universities, and that key posts in the judiciary are held by French magistrates proposed by the French government. Ordinances on judicial services, like those appointing magistrates, go straight to the prince without passing through the Council of Government.

How France frames Monaco's conduct abroad

Article 1 of the constitution defines Monaco as a sovereign and independent state "dans le cadre des principes généraux du droit international et des conventions particulières avec la France". Article 13 gives the prince the role of representing the principality to foreign powers. The treaty of 24 October 2002, which Monaco: history sets against the treaty of 1918 it replaced, supplies the working rules.

Under that treaty France guarantees Monaco's independence, sovereignty and territory on the same terms as its own, and Monaco undertakes that its actions accord with France's fundamental interests in political, economic, security and defence matters, through regular consultation. Monaco's international relations are to converge with France's on fundamental questions, and France in turn consults Monaco to take its fundamental interests into account. Relations are conducted at diplomatic level, with each state keeping a mission in the other. France undertakes to help Monaco join the international organisations France belongs to, and Monegasque citizens may use French diplomatic or consular posts in countries where Monaco has no consulate. A Franco-Monegasque cooperation commission is the standing forum for consultation.

Defence rests with France. French forces may enter and stay in the principality at the prince's request or with his consent, and without it only when Monaco's independence, sovereignty or territory is under grave and immediate threat and the public powers have stopped functioning. Monaco keeps no navy or air force. Its own forces are the Compagnie des Carabiniers du Prince, created by Honoré IV in 1817 to guard the prince and the palace, together with the armed fire and civil defence corps, and Wikipedia notes that the police are commanded by a French officer.

Monaco joined the United Nations in 1993 and the Council of Europe in 2004, and the record lists membership of the Francophonie, the OSCE and the Union for the Mediterranean. It stays outside the European Union. A customs union links it to France, and under an agreement of 1963 French customs law applies in Monaco and its territorial waters. It uses the euro by an arrangement with the Council of the European Union, with its own designs on the national side of the coins.

How Monaco's single commune shares ground with the state

Article 78 makes the whole territory a single commune, so the municipality and the state administer the same streets. The Communal Council is elected for four years by direct universal suffrage on lists, and it chooses the mayor and deputies from among its own members. The constitution gives it fifteen members; Wikipedia's account gives fourteen and describes the councillors as strictly non-partisan, with opposition forming inside the council.

The commune depends on the state at every step. The council meets every three months for sessions of no more than fifteen days, and extraordinary sessions need the Minister of State's request or permission. Its decisions take effect fifteen days after they are sent to the Minister of State unless he objects by a reasoned ministerial arrêté. It can be dissolved by a reasoned arrêté after the Council of State has given its opinion, with a special delegation running the commune until a new council is elected within three months. Its money comes from communal property, its ordinary resources and an allocation written into the state budget, which the National Council votes.

The two mandates may be held together. Article 80 allows a communal councillor to sit on the National Council as well, and Article 60 bars only the mayor from serving as the National Council's president or vice-president. For administrative purposes the territory is divided into ten wards, and it is traditionally described in four quarters: Monaco-Ville, Monte-Carlo, La Condamine and Fontvieille.