On 16 December 2022, 47 parliamentary staff of the Chamber of Deputies and Senate of Chile participated in two workshops on legislative drafting by Dr. Piedad García-Escudero Márquez, an expert in legislative drafting and head of the judicial studies department of the Congress of the Deputies of Spain.
During the workshops, the participants, and all committee staff, debated and exchanged experiences on a broad range of topics relevant to legislative drafting in Chile and Spain. These included the use of inclusive language, the risks to legal coherence that its adoption can produce, the challenges committee staff face in advising parliamentarians on the drafting of legislation, and the incipient role of technology in the legislative process. The participants agreed on the value of preparing a manual on legislative drafting and the need to support parliamentary advisors with training and guidance to improve the quality and coherence of bills.
The workshop followed an e-learning course on legislative drafting, also prepared by Dr. García-Escudero Márquez, which looked at the specific traditions and approaches to legislative drafting in Spain and Spanish-speaking Latin America. The participants from the Chamber of Deputies and Senate of Chile tested the course, which will shortly be available for other parliaments on the Agora eLearning Portal for Parliamentary Development.