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Relationships with the executive The President of the Republic can decide to dissolve the National Assembly and call for new legislative elections. This is meant as a way to resolve stalemates where the Assembly cannot decide on a clear political direction. This possibility is seldom exerced. The last dissolution was by Jacques Chirac in 1997, following from the lack of popularity of prime minister Alain Juppé; however, the plan backfired, and the newly elected majority was opposed to Chirac. The National Assembly can overthrow the executive government (that is, the Prime Minister and other ministers) by voting a motion of censure. For this reason, the prime minister and his cabinet are necessarily from the dominant party or coalition in the assembly. In the case of a president and assembly from opposing parties, this leads to the situation known as cohabitation. While motions of censure are periodically proposed by the opposition following government actions that it deems highly inappropriate, they are purely rhetorical; party discipline ensures that, throughout a parliamentary term, the government is never overthrown by the Assembly. There has historically been a single case of a successful motion of censure: on October 5, 1962, against the government of Prime Minister Georges Pompidou. The Government (the Prime Minister and the Minister of relationships with Parliament) sets the priority agenda for the Assembly's sessions, except for a single day each month. In practice, given the number of priority items, it means that the schedule of the Assembly is almost entirely set by the executive; bills generally only have a chance to be examined if proposed or supported by the executive. Current membership The last legislative elections, held in June 2002 resulted in the following distribution of seats: See also | ||||||||||
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