Las convenciones de redacción legislativa en la UE y su comparación con fuentes nacionales: convergencias y divergencias. Legislative drafting conventions in the EU and their comparison with national sources: similarities and differences

Abstract

This article compares similarities and differences between legislative drafting in the EU and in three legal systems: Spain, the United Kingdom and France. To this end, a multilingual corpus has been compiled, consisting of EU prescriptive resources in these languages and those of reference in the Member States. The aim of these resources is to homogenize the criteria for legislative drafting. Among the results observed we should highlight the convergences in terms of the structure and organization of content and divergences in style related to the use of verb tenses or specific terminology. It is concluded that Community drafting has its own characteristics distinct from national legislation.

Keywords

• multilingualism; legislative instruments; legislative drafting; style guides; regulations