The forum focused on the legislative process and drafting techniques, including the use of modern technologies in legislative drafting.
The Max Planck Foundation held its first consultative forum with the Parliamentary Legislative Department of the Iraqi Parliament under the German Federal Foreign Office-funded project titled ‘Democratising the Legislative Process in Iraq’ in Baghdad, Iraq, from 2 to 4 December 2024. Foundation staff were joined by prominent regional and international experts and practitioners who addressed various aspects of legislating.
The forum began with an exchange between the PLD and the regional experts from Lebanon and Jordan that focused on the role of legislative drafting units in the framework of the overall legislative process, and the challenges faced within each of the Iraqi, Lebanese and Jordanian systems respectively. There followed a general overview of major legislative drafting principles that set the stage for the practical exercises that ensued.
Based on the Iraqi draft law on the right to information, the PLD members were invited to work on different aspects of the legislative process, from ensuring its compliance with the Constitution and Iraq’s international obligations to identifying existing legislation of relevance to the draft law to identifying the key issues to be addressed, to conducting comparative research and identifying best practices, to assessing the current draft law. Throughout the first two days of practical exercises, Max Planck staff and the regional experts engaged in voluntary peer advice with their counterparts at the PLD. Discussion of the draft law was particularly timely as the PLD had just received a request from Parliament to review it.
The second part of the forum focused on comparative experiences in the use of modern technologies in legislative drafting. It featured exchanges with an Acting Senior at the European Commission who is currently working on LEOS – Legislation Editing Open Source, as well as the Head of Regulatory Policy at the Department of Legislation and Legal Affairs in the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security.
Project activities are set to continue until late 2025.