Introducing Parliamentary Diplomacy to students and professors in Madrid

University of Luxembourg Professor Philippe Poirier, Director of the Chair of Legislative Studies (https://wwwfr.uni.lu/chaire_parlementaire), gave a two-hour seminar on Parliamentary Diplomacy at the Parliamentary Law Institute of the University Complutense of Madrid (https://www.ucm.es/idp), with the support of his doctoral researcher Laura Gil Besada.

The multilingual seminar, held in English and Spanish, took place on March 31^st , 2022. The event was welcomed by around 40 students and professors from the University of Luxembourg, the University Complutense of Madrid, and other institutions.

Professor Poirier started by explaining the state of affairs of interparliamentary cooperation under a theoretical framework. Afterwards, he used three case studies – ParlAmericas, the Parliamentary Confederation of the Americas, and the State Legislative Leaders Foundation – to illustrate the objectives and lessons learned of interparliamentary cooperation and regional integration in the Americas.

Professor Poirier’s seminar was followed by a one-hour discussion centred on the importance of assessing parliamentary diplomacy from the political science and law perspectives and on the usefulness of parliamentary diplomacy to promote the diffusion of the norms of liberal democracies.

The following day, Professor Poirier and Ms Gil Besada were received by the President of the Constitutional Court of Spain, H. E. Mr Pedro González-Trevijano.

This seminar represents the initial step to strengthening the ties between the Chair of Legislative Studies at the University of Luxembourg and the Parliamentary Law Institute at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Representatives from both institutions agreed that their activities were complementary, and that closer cooperation in the future is not only desirable, but mutually beneficial.