Halvan Skard and Luc van den Brande: “The Congress and the Committee of the Regions have a great deal to contribute to each other”

On Wednesday 6 February the presidency of the EU Committee of the Regions (CoR) was handed over by Frenchman Michel Delebarre, who has been in office since February 2006, to the Belgian Luc van den Brande. This “handover” was an opportunity for the new CoR President and the President of the Congress, Halvdan Skard, to take stock of the co-operation between the two bodies.

Interview – 06.02.2008

Three questions for Halvan Skard

Question: In 2005 the Congress and the Committee of the Regions agreed to expand their co-operation on regional policies in Europe and also to strive to prevent duplication of activities.  Is this agreement working properly, and what synergies have you now developed or are you hoping to reinforce?

Halvdan Skard: The Committee of the Regions and the Congress co-operated in observing the local elections in Kosovo, and we are hoping to expand this co-operation exercise for other local and regional elections.  We will be meeting this month to consider stepping up our mutual co-operation.  I think we should also prevent “duplication” by avoiding conducting similar activities, which is why I am proposing that we meet more often, including our specialised committees, in order to improve mutual information.  Furthermore, each of the two bodies must preserve its own specific character and centres of excellence: for instance, monitoring the implementation of the European Charter of Local Self-Government really is a matter specifically for the Congress and must remain so.

Question: If the Charter of Local Self-Government is indeed the Congress’s “preserve”, what about its regional counterpart, the future Charter of Regional Democracy?

Halvdan Skard: We have been working on this draft instrument for over ten years now, and last year the Committee of the Regions formally backed the new version of the Charter which we are currently finalising.  This support is extremely valuable for us, but it is obvious that the Charter of Regional Democracy is and must remain a Congress brainchild, whose implementation it will also monitor.

Question: The Congress, like the Committee of the Regions, mainly works in the interests of the regions and municipalities of Europe.  Are there any Congress acquis which you would like the CoR to incorporate into its work?

Halvdan Skard: I would like the Committee of the Regions to become involved in the major humanist campaigns which the Congress has initiated at the local and regional levels, such as the programmes to combat violence, particularly the campaigns against trafficking in human beings and domestic and family violence.  The Congress and the CoR also share an interest in developing “Euroregions” and should work together on promoting local and regional democracy in the participating countries.  Such co-operation is in fact being introduced in the Black Sea Euroregion, but it is much less developed, or indeed non-existent, in the cases of the Adriatic and the Baltic.

And three questions for Luc van den Brande

A Flemish regional elected representative and Belgian Federal Senator, Luc van den Brande is a good illustration of the “unwritten” agreement to the effect that the President of the Committee of the Regions should be a local elected representative alternating with a regional one.  An expert on the Council of Europe, where he is a member of the Parliamentary Assembly, Luc van den Brande considers that the Congress and the Committee of the Regions have a great deal to contribute to each other.

Question: Ever since 2005 the Congress and the Committee of the Regions have been linked together by co-operation principles geared to developing synergies and preventing duplication of work: how would you assess this agreement so far?

Luc van den Brande: I think we have many good practices to exchange and that we must continue our six-monthly mutual information meetings, but we should also invite each other to our meetings whenever we address subjects of local and/or regional importance.  In fact the Congress has wide experience of observing local and regional elections, and we have now formed a partnership with it in this field.  For the future, I would like us to engage in practical co-operation, and we should even have joint rapporteurs from both bodies to deal with some specific subjects.  Moreover, in view of the fact that 20 of the 47 Council of Europe member countries are outside the European Union, we must develop a genuine neighbourhood policy with their local and regional bodies, once again adopting a highly practical approach.

Question: The Congress is just finishing off its draft European Charter of Regional Democracy, which is also supported by the Committee of the Regions: will you be taking any further steps to move this project forward?

Luc van den Brande: We adopted a resolution backing this text a few months ago, and I am hoping that we can submit an opinion on it at European Union level.  Such an opinion, known as a Committee of the Regions own-initiative opinion, will certainly help reinforce and further shore up the text.

Question: Are there any Congress acquis which you would like to incorporate into your policy, and conversely are there any Committee of the Regions acquis which the Congress should take on board?

Luc van den Brande: If the Lisbon Treaty is adopted, the Committee of the Regions would be able to turn to the European Court of Justice if it considered that certain policies were at variance with the subsidiarity principle.  I consider that our whole action to promote and defend subsidiarity could also very usefully fuel the Congress’s work and discussions.  Conversely, the Congress publishes very detailed reports on local and regional democracy in Europe, and I would hope that we can use them more frequently.  Lastly, we should broadly turn the Council of Europe’s experience to better account, particularly in the human rights field, pragmatically taking advantage of our mutual assets.