Address by Mr Giovanni di Stasi, President of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe, on the occasion of the investiture with the gold medal “for works of value to society” at the Russian Permanent Delegation, Strasbourg, 27 October 2005

The Ambassador,
The Director of the Institute for European Integration,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Dear friends,

It is a high honour and a great pleasure for me to receive here in this Embassy, in the home of Russia in Strasbourg as it were, a prestigious Russian decoration.

I appreciate this honour personally and am most gratified by its conferment. It is a source of personal pride to receive the gold medal “for works of value to society” under the auspices of your great country and those of Empress Catherine the Great, carrying a special dignity.

However, I would not wish to claim this proud distinction for myself alone, but rather extend it to the body over which I preside, the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe.

I am convinced that the “Institute for European Integration” intended this choice as a token of recognition of the increased importance which our Congress has acquired in European construction, and it is especially on that account that I wish to convey to the Institute my congratulations and heartfelt thanks for this distinction.

Echoing the exact designation of this decoration, I quote “for works of value to society”, I should like to point out that the Congress makes an original and decisive contribution to building European integration will dwell on this point for a moment if I may.

European integration springs from a founding utopia which we want to make a lasting reality for our peoples. This utopia is the disappearance, the eradication, of warfare among the peoples of Europe as the progenitors of the European design. All those wars that mark the course of our history are perceived by us as fratricidal wars which have lastingly and brutally torn the great European family apart. The memory of that history is intolerable and we want to do our utmost to halt the fatal escalation of our fears and hatreds.

There lies the historical core of the scheme for European integration. For fifty years, this aspiration has become embedded in institutions like the Council of Europe or the European Communities. But firstly it induced nations, states and governments to co-operate, and it has not always been easy to give this intergovernmental co-operation a local and regional dimension. That was our everyday task and commitment in the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities, and it was an endeavour of endurance and patience as well as being, may I say, too slow at times.

Today most governments and some political observers acknowledge the importance of the municipalities and regions in the process of drawing the peoples of Europe closer together. Better still, everyone plainly sees that the lack of a local dimension in the building of a united Europe would deprive it of a human dimension, a tangible and grassroots dimension. This is also one of the lessons of the debate on the referendums to adopt the European constitution. The reason why our peoples have not always supported the new Constitution of the European Union with the enthusiasm that might have been wished for is that the democratic and human dimension of our construction process was not adequately realised.

Accordingly, I hold the conviction, and it is our conviction in the Congress, that there is no democracy without local democracy, and there is no better teaching of democracy than local democracy, which is like the primary school or grassroots democracy, the most visible, tangible and immediate manifestation of it for each one of us.

Moreover, it is our resolve in the Congress to harness this local democracy to European integration in order to give it a heightened citizen-centred dimension and make it clear that Europe is not to be built solely in the capitals of our countries but also in our furthest and deepest heartland.

I am well aware that Russia has a special perspective regarding this construction process considering its size, its involvement in European history and its presence in the Council of Europe and thus in our Congress of Local and Regional authorities, and further considering its position outside the European Union.
Yet the Russian standpoint as regards the construction of a united Europe is not, I fully realise, to gainsay the importance of this construction for all countries of Europe as a whole but in my view quite the contrary: to highlight its whole complexity, diversity and, to put it in a nutshell, wealth. European construction is nobody’s particular property. It is not the monopoly of one organisation, or based in one capital, or written into a rectilinear and simplified history. In this complex process, the Council of Europe has its rightful place beside the European Union, as Russia has beside the other European nations and the local and regional authorities beside the states, the national authorities and the governments. Acceptance of this diversity signifies persuading our peoples to lend their support to this scheme, which cannot go ahead without them.

Allow me to place this gold medal which you are presenting to me in the perspective of successful European integration, strong enough to put within the reach of all our citizens a historical ambition commensurate with the European continent, and flexible enough to subsume all our points of diversity and all our historical antecedents.

Mr Ambassador, I know that you are a firm advocate of the role of the Congress in Europe, and I know that the country you represent has never grudged its support. This gold medal is the emblem – that is my wish – of the road which we shall travel together, leading to the goal which unites us.