C. House of Representatives (Article IV.2)

The House of Representatives shall comprise 42 Members, two- thirds elected from the territory of the Federation, one-third from the territory of the Republika Srpska.

a. Members of the House of Representatives shall be directly elected from their Entity in accordance with an election law to be adopted by the Parliamentary Assembly. The first election, however, shall take place in accordance with Annex 3 to the General Framework Agreement.

b. A majority of all members elected to the House of Representatives shall comprise a quorum.

The House of Representatives has forty-two members who are directly elected. Twenty-eight must be elected from the territory of the Federation and fourteen from the Republika Srpska.²⁷³⁷

A quorum of the House of Representatives is constitutionally defined as a majority of all members elected to the body.²⁷³⁸ This issue has created controversy in recent years. Until 2007, the Rules of Procedure of the House of Representatives defined a quorum as follows:

“Twenty-two representatives shall comprise a quorum provided there is a minimum 1/3 of the representatives present from each Entity unless the decision-making procedure in certain matters is otherwise regulated by the BiH Constitution and these Rules of Procedure.”²⁷³⁹

The 1/3 Entity attendance requirement in the pre-2007 version is not found in the BiH Constitution. This additional requirement in the rules of procedure created the possibility that a number of representatives from one Entity could block the work of the body by boycotting a session even when the quorum required by the BiH Constitution, a simple majority, had been met. The rules of procedure were amended in 2007 to drop the 1/3 entity attendance requirement and to follow the explicit language of the BiH Constitution.²⁷⁴⁰ As a result, it is now clear that a majority of twenty-two representatives constitutes a quorum, regardless of the entity from which they were elected.