The legislative drafting is the art of drafting laws, which encompasses the knowledge and methods specific to legislative activity. Its aim is to determine the best ways of developing, drafting, publishing and applying legal standards. To this end, a training workshop on legislative drafting for parliamentarians and parliamentary staff was held in Ngozi from April 5 to 8, 2023.

Facilitated by the Honorable Moussa Tine, a Senegalese, the MPs and parliamentary executives got trained on the following topics: introduction on legislative drafting; description of the normative process; questions prior to the elaboration of a normative text, categories of norms and their hierarchy in Burundian law; sanctioning of Legistics; control of constitutionality as well as specific questions concerning the Legistics of international treaties.
With regard to the missions of parliamentarians, the passing of laws is a succession of procedures that begin with inter-ministerial work followed by the examination of draft laws in the Council of Ministers and finally the parliamentary deliberation that takes place in plenary. However, all the bills passed by the MPs in plenary must respect the constitutionality control which refers to the creation of the (American) judge Marshall in 1803, the trainer specified.

To this end, it is the Constitutional Court that is competent to rule on the respect of constitutionality and its decisions are not subject to appeal (Article 231, paragraph 2 of the Constitution of Burundi). Within a time limit prescribed by the law, any member of parliament who feels aggrieved may refer the matter to this court for verification of compliance with the constitutionality, and it is currently recognized that the Constitution constitutes the ’mother standard’, the one that governs the entire system and to which all others are subordinate.

It should be noted that Article 26 of the Constitution of Burundi provides that: ’When the Constitutional Court declares that the law before it, contains a provision contrary to the Constitution without finding at the same time that it is inherent to the whole of that law, the President of the Republic may either promulgate the law with the exception of the provision, or ask the National Assembly and the Senate for a second reading’, the facilitator explained.

In addition to the material learned during the workshop, there are some terms that are often used in Parliament, their origins and their legal powers. These include: parliamentary diplomacy, explanatory statement, amendment, insertion, referral, revision and analysis.

Organised by the Swiss cooperation in collaboration with the Burundian Parliament, this workshop was opened by the First Deputy Speaker of the Senate, Honorable Denise Ndadaye on behalf of the Parliament and the political advisor Isabelle Peter representing the cooperation.
After fruitful exchanges on legislative drafting, the workshop was closed by the speeches of Honorable Abel Gashatsi, 2nd Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly, and the representative of the Swiss cooperation in Burundi.