PACOP – Support Project for Parliamentary Cooperation

Parliaments are fundamental institutions in countries with rule of law and democratic regimes, in which power belongs to the people and is exercised through their representatives.

Electoral democracy has declined in nearly half of the world’s countries, but many States have nonetheless undergone significant institutional transformations, including transitions to systems of pluralistic parliamentary democracy.

It thus seems essential to support parliaments, which are the pillars of democracy, so that they can take up these new challenges. Participation by women and young people in parliamentary processes, and more broadly in political life, also remains a major issue in many societies.

The purpose of the support project for parliamentary cooperation is to boost the quality and effectiveness of parliamentary action to improve democratic governance in Benin, Botswana, and Gabon.

The project is part of an institutional capacity-building approach to modernise the working methods of partner parliaments and strengthen their democratic effectiveness. To do so, the project establishes close synergy among all stakeholders and a process of co-construction with partner parliaments, based on listening to their needs and respecting their sovereignty.

More specifically, the project has two main objectives:

1. Responding to the challenges related to the legislative, monitoring, and evaluation functions of the parliaments of Benin, Botswana, and Gabon, in particular with regard to improving legislative work, parliamentary diplomacy, ethics, and gender equality. 
2. Enhance the expertise of parliamentary clerks and their assistants in the performance of their duties, focusing on legal issues, internal management activities at meetings, and the performance of specific administrative tasks.

To achieve these goals, Expertise France puts into motion actions to promote direct peer exchanges. They are based on five areas of action:

1. Capacity-building of parliaments in the exercise of their constitutional actions: drafting and voting legislation, monitoring government action, evaluating public policies;
2. Consolidating the “gender” approach in parliamentary action; 
3. Building the administrative and financial management capacities of parliaments, while taking into account the specificities of the financial autonomy of assemblies;
4. Intensification of the international action of parliaments, in view of the growing weight of international parliamentary events;
5. Opening parliament to the public, by using a broad “open parliament” approach including free access to parliamentary activities, openness to the public, and transparency and ethics.