15^th Plenary Session of the Congress, 27-29 May 2008

Thursday 29^th May

Speech of Mrs Mari Kiviniemi, Minister of Public Administration and Local Government

Mr Chairman, Distinguished Members, Ladies and Gentlemen!

Mr President, allow me first to congratulate you on your election as the Congress President. I do hope that your term will be a successful one, and for my own part, I wish to continue the good cooperation, which your esteemed predecessor Mr Skard started.

It’s a great pleasure and honour for me to address the Congress today. You have already had a busy plenary week with an agenda packed of important topics but it is good to see that you still have a very energetic appearance.

I assume, that the reason why I was given the opportunity to speak to you is my task as the rapporteur for evaluating the work of the Council of Europe in the area of local and regional government. This is actually the second time I am speaking to members of the Congress about this topic. In February the Bureau visited Helsinki and I had a chance to engage in a very fruitful dialogue with them.

As you know, last autumn in Valencia my colleagues entrusted me with the responsibility of drawing up a report on how to develop the work of the Council of Europe in the area of local and regional government. The report doesn’t only deal with the in-house aspects of the activities. The mandate – as it was written - underlines the importance of studying how the Council of Europe can synchronise its work in this field with other international actors – such as the EU, OECD and the United Nations. The formulation of the mandate also obliges me to prepare the report together with my ministerial colleagues. I will return to this later on.

The preparatory work is now well under way. At this stage we are mapping the landscape where the Council of Europe operates when dealing with questions concerning the promotion of local and regional democracy. We have covered some ground in the intergovernmental side and also had a change to get acquainted with the activities of the other important pillar of the Council of Europe: the Congress.

Of course, at this relatively early stage, I cannot present a detailed action plan on how to improve the work of the Council of Europe. The time for that will come in the autumn. But I would still like to take this opportunity to discuss a couple of preliminary observations with you. I hope to hear your comments on these points later on.  

The first challenge I can see in the work of the Council of Europe is how to make it more visible. The Council of Europe makes important contributions to different administrative reforms all over Europe but very seldom is it mentioned or given credit for its work when the final outcome is presented. Many of you have worked with projects sponsored by the European Union and know how important it is to have the right size flag or logo in the right place. And if you don’t follow the rules, the sanctions are severe. The Council of Europe doesn’t have any rules of this kind and probably shouldn’t have them in the future either. But it is not, in my opinion, a very sustainable situation to run the Council of Europe like a shop without a window.

By visibility, in this case, I don’t mean only the external visibility. Equally important, or perhaps even more important, is to improve internal visibility. Some member states seem be unaware of the work the Council of Europe does and of the services it provides. To put it very bluntly, part of the problem is that the “older” democracies tend to be complacent and don’t bother to seek advice from the services of the Council of Europe when they introduce administrative reforms. Among others, my own country does not escape this criticism unscathed.

This brings us to the next challenge: how to strengthen the involvement of the member states in the work of the Council of Europe? As a matter of fact, the preparatory process of this report already serves that purpose quite well. The first round of took place in spring. A letter was addressed to the responsible minister of each member state and it consisted of only a few very general and fairly political questions. The aim was to encourage ministers to stop and think about their views on the work of the Council of Europe in the field of local and regional government now and in the future. To some degree this goal was reached: most of the ministers and organisations replied in an constructive way. After a careful analysis of these replies, we will get a clearer picture on the strengths and weaknesses of the present situation, and a road is paved for a more detailed questionnaire, which will be sent out before the summer break.

My wish is that, during the drafting process of this report, the level of interest and involvement, for example, in the different working groups will rise and that a new sentiment of ownership of the Council of Europe will emerge. It is pointless to expect any spectacular progress unless the governments show initiative. If that is lacking, we are just trying to push with a rope, and the results will not reach newspaper headlines. What I sincerely hope for and expect is concrete suggestions for improvements in present practises and ideas on how to shape future activities.

The replies received from the two consultations will set the tone for the first draft of the report, which in turn will be put under the review of all interested parties. The final report will be ready before the end of this year. Formal decisions on my proposals will then be taken under the Dutch presidency in 2009.

My intention is to keep the preparatory process as inclusive as possible. I will obviously meet many of my minister colleagues and discuss the report with them. But it is not only the ministers I will be discussing matters with but also other key players such as the Congress both today and later on in the process, as well as representatives of the administration of the Council of Europe and other organisations.

Ladies and gentlemen!

As a member of the inter-governmental pillar of the Council of Europe, I have followed your work in a sense from the outside. The Congress is a unique international institution with a long and noble history. You celebrated your 50^th anniversary a year ago and not without a reason: you have worked vehemently throughout those years for a better and more democratic local democracy from several complementary angels.  You have made a magnificent contribution through the preparation of the European Charter for Local Self-Government. The Congress prepared the Charter so that it was ready to be made into a Council of Europe Convention and it entered into force two decades ago. Ever since, it has been the most important benchmark in both the European and the global development of local government. 

One important part of your work is election observation and political monitoring. Your contribution to election observation is valuable and the cooperation with other international organisations during such missions is exemplary. Here, as in political monitoring, the importance of that this is done by peers is something that needs to be emphasised. The dialogue is always more fruitful when both parties have a profound knowledge of the issues and have in their personal capacity had to struggle with the same kind of problems in their home municipalities or regions. This way, recommendations become more realistic and target-oriented.

The work you do through the European Network of Training Organisations, your participation in the Council of Democratic Elections, your assistance in the creation of the Outline Convention on Transfrontier Cooperation, your participation in the establishment of the European network of cities for local immigration policies for migrants... The list of accomplishments for promoting local democracy goes on and on.

But the past is gone and there is still a lot to do in the world. As any modern organisation – private or public – we also need to look further ahead, be prepared for new challenges and remain open to the changes in the surrounding world. You, the Congress, have now quite a new Charter, which was adopted by the Committee of Ministers a year ago. The charter states the goal very clearly by giving the Congress the responsibility – and I quote - “to continue to promote local democracy and decentralisation, taking into account the internal organisation of the countries concerned, so as to reach all levels of European society.”

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By what can the Congress reach this goal? I am neither in a position to tell you how to develop the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities nor would I want to do so. It is your task as a responsible, developing organisation to choose the best ways. And, as one of the great names of modern art Andy Warhol, wrote in his book The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.

The only thing I want to say here today in this regard is: if you want to reform your ways of working, do it sooner rather than later, and do it boldly and I can promise you that you will have my full support.

Mr. Chairman,

The three pillars of the Council of Europe - intergovernmental cooperation, the Congress and the Parliamentary Assembly – each have their roles to play in developing local and regional democracy. The purpose of my report is to see where and how this work can be enhanced. 

I’m sure that nobody in this room full of decision-makers, who struggle daily with the allocation of scarce resources collected from the tax-payers, will object if I set the goal of this process into one that will produce a system where all participants feel useful, where procedures are efficient but democratic, and where the outputs are worth the money and the effort spent.

I thank you for your attention.