Marrakech – A new report on the work of Morocco’s outgoing House of Representatives during the eleventh legislative term (2021-2026) has documented a substantial legislative backlog, uneven attendance in the chamber, and thousands of questions to the government that went unanswered along the way.
The assessment comes from SimSim-Participation Citoyenne, an independent Moroccan organization that monitors parliamentary performance and works to widen public access to information about it.
The report draws on data published by official sources, including the House of Representatives website, the website of the Minister Delegate to the Head of Government in charge of Relations with Parliament, and the official site of the Head of Government. Its figures run up to a data cutoff of August 5.
The findings land as Morocco opens a new legislative chapter. King Mohammed VI chaired the opening of the first session of the new legislative year last Friday, following the September 23 elections.
On Tuesday, the House holds a plenary session to elect its president. According to a statement from the head of the chamber’s provisional bureau, the session convenes at 3:00 p.m. in Rabat, in line with Article 62 of the Constitution and Article 48 of the House’s internal rules.
The transition also sets the stage for Head of Government-designate Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri as she prepares to lead the next government.
Fewer laws passed, government bills dominant
On the legislative side, the House approved 255 legal texts during the term, down from 337 in the tenth legislature and 383 in the ninth.
Government bills dominated that output. Of the texts passed, 237 were government bills, and 18 were private member bills, placing government initiatives at 92.94% of the total against 7.06% for private member proposals.
Bills ratifying international agreements alone accounted for 90 texts, or 35.29% of the full legislative output. By method of adoption, 156 texts passed unanimously and 99 by majority vote.
The gap between proposed and passed legislation stands out. The government referred 484 bills to the House over the term, of which the chamber approved 237, a rate of 48.97%, leaving 247 government bills without approval.
Lawmakers, for their part, submitted 483 private member bills. The Haraki (Mouvement Populaire) Group led that effort with 143 proposals, followed by the Socialist Group-Federal Opposition with 109 and the Justice and Development (PJD) parliamentary group with 68.
As for their fate, 18 proposals were approved, 46 were rejected in plenary sessions, and 32 were rejected in committee, while 388 remained without approval.
Attendance during voting sessions varied widely. The highest turnout reached 273 of 395 MPs, or 69.11%, during the first reading of the 2022 Finance Bill. The lowest fell to 46 lawmakers, or 11.65%, during the vote on Bill 03.25 relating to collective investment undertakings in transferable securities.
Thousands of questions, far fewer answers
Oversight tells a similar story of uneven engagement. Based on the House website data cited in the report, lawmakers posed 32,093 written questions. The government answered 19,871 of them, a rate of 61.92%, while 12,222, or 38.08%, went unanswered.
The opposition accounted for 63.21% of written questions against 36.79% for the majority. The Haraki Group filed the most, with 6,197, followed by the Socialist Group with 5,387 and the PJD group with 5,027. These questions centered on national education, interior, health, equipment, water, and agriculture.
Oral questions drew a far lower response rate. Of 18,240 oral questions, the government answered 3,969, or 21.76%, leaving 14,271 without a reply.
Here the balance reversed: majority groups posed most oral questions, at 66.04% against 33.96% for the opposition. The Authenticity and Modernity (PAM) Group led with 6,784, followed by the National Rally of Independents (RNI) with 2,593 and the Socialist Group with 2,531.
Government answers split 2,767 to majority questions, or 69.72%, and 1,202 to opposition questions, or 30.28% – a distribution of replies between the two sides rather than a response rate for each.
On accountability of the Head of Government, the report counted 24 appearances before the House in the monthly sessions reserved for general-policy questions, covering social protection, education, health, investment, water policy, and employment. It also flagged a discrepancy among official sources over the number of itemized government pledges.
Among other oversight tools, the report listed 11 temporary exploratory missions; reports for seven were published on the House website, while four went unpublished. The eleventh term saw no fact-finding committee established.
For public policy evaluation, the report counted 11 thematic working groups, covering water policy, administration reform, enforcement of the law on violence against women, literacy, artificial intelligence, the energy transition, and the Green Morocco Plan.
Three plenary sessions were devoted to discussing four reports, on water policy, administration reform, the law on violence against women, and literacy programs.
The report concludes that government initiative prevailed over the texts that became law, that approval of private member bills remained limited, and that the government’s engagement with parliamentary accountability tools was uneven.
It points to the need for better access to reports and data, and for clarifying why figures diverge across official sources, so that the chamber’s record can be read more precisely.
