The European Union accompanies Chile in its constitutional process

Chile is experiencing a historic moment. The country has launched the constitutional process to prepare a new Magna Carta. It is one of the most innovative processes in recent times. The Constitutional Convention has a balanced membership and includes participation by indigenous peoples, placing the process at the forefront of comparative constitutional law. The objective is not only to develop and approve a new constitution but also to do so in a model way that could become an international benchmark.   

In this context, Chile will take into account other countries’ experiences of this process to nurture its own. To achieve this, the National Congress, through the Library of Congress, and the European Union (EU) Delegation in Chile, with support from the EUROsociAL+ programme, which is funded by the EU and partially managed by FIIAPP, have inaugurated the webinar cycle “Chile- European Union Dialogues”.   

This cycle of webinars is part of the “Chile-European Union Forum” initiative, which aims to exchange experiences both on the process to create a constitution as well as on its essential content such as social cohesion, access to a welfare system and the guarantee of fundamental rights, showing lessons learned in drafting European constitutions from their diversity.  

At the inauguration, the European Union (EU) High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, stressed that the European Union and Chile “are very close partners and share fundamental values such as democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights”. Borrell affirmed that, after the plebiscite in October 2020, “we expressed our willingness to accompany Chile” and that from practically all the country’s political, social and economic sectors “we were asked for knowledge about European constitutional experiences”. For this reason, Borell reported that from the EU “we will collaborate to generate ample spaces for dialogue within the framework of this process that we hope will culminate in a new constitution resulting from broad political, economic, intergenerational and territorial consensus“.  

The encounter was also attended by the president of the Chilean Senate, Adriana Muñoz; the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Diego Paulsen; the member of the European Parliament and co-president of the EU-Chile Joint Commission, Inmaculada Rodríguez; the Chilean Member of Parliament and co-chair of the EU-Chile Joint Parliamentary Commission, Pablo Lorenzini and the EU ambassador to Chile, León de la Torre