Government of the Arab Union

The Government of the Arab Union (Arabic: حكومة الاتحاد ḥukūmat al-ittiḥād) is the federal government of the Union of Arab Republics. It is composed of three branches: the Arab Congress (the legislative), a bicameral assembly which elects the Presidium (the de facto paramount legislative authority); the Council of Ministers (the executive), which oversees multiple ministries and state committees (executive departments and agencies); and the Supreme Court of the Arab Union and subordinate Arab Union Court of Appeals (the highest institutions of the national judiciary and the only two permanent federal courts—the rest of the judiciary is organised at the level of the republics of the Arab Union).

The 20 republics of the Arab Union (the union's constituent federated states) each have their own level of government, also consisting of three branches. The Constitution of the Arab Union provides for the delineation of jurisdiction between the two levels of government: for example, criminal law is set exclusively by the federal legislature, but the executive governments of each republic handle the majority of actual law enforcement; similarly, republican judiciaries hear the vast majority of actual criminal trials, the Supreme Court of the Arab Union hearing only cases affecting two or more republics and the Court of Appeals of the Arab Union hearing only appeals of the verdicts of republican supreme courts or of federal tribunals (temporary courts established across the Arab Union for the purpose of hearing routine trials which nonetheless come under federal jurisdiction).