Standing Orders of the Council of States
(SO-CS)

¹ The Pres­id­ent shall ful­fil the tasks con­ferred on him or her by law and:

a.

chair the Coun­cil meet­ings;

b.

es­tab­lish the agenda, sub­ject to Coun­cil de­cisions to the con­trary, tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the pro­gramme of the par­lia­ment­ary ses­sion es­tab­lished by the Bur­eau;

c.

chair the Presid­ing Col­lege and the Coun­cil Bur­eau;

d.

rep­res­ent the Coun­cil in its ex­tern­al deal­ings.

² If the Pres­id­ent is un­able to chair the meet­ing, or wishes by way of ex­cep­tion to par­ti­cip­ate in a de­bate, he or she shall be re­placed pro­vi­sion­ally by the First Vice-Pres­id­ent, or if need be by the Second Vice-Pres­id­ent.

³ If neither Vice-Pres­id­ent is able to chair the meet­ing, the pres­id­ency shall be as­sumed by the fol­low­ing per­sons:

a.

a pre­de­cessor; if more than one is present in the Coun­cil, the coun­cil mem­ber who more re­cently ex­er­cised the of­fice shall take pre­ced­ence;

b.

the coun­cil mem­ber who has served the most terms of of­fice; if two or more coun­cil mem­bers have served the same term, the older mem­ber shall take pre­ced­ence.

⁴ The Vice-Pres­id­ents:

a.

sup­port the Pres­id­ent;

b.

carry out with the Pres­id­ent the tasks con­ferred on the Presid­ing Col­lege by law.

⁵ De­cisions of the Presid­ing Col­lege re­quire the ap­prov­al of at least two of its mem­bers.