21st Governing Council of UN-HABITAT

(Nairobi, Kenya, 16-20 April 2007)

Speech by Ian Micallef, President of the Chamber of Local Authorities

Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe

Mr Chairman,

Excellencies,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a great honour for me to address the Governing Council of UN-HABITAT in my capacity as President of the Local Authorities Chamber of the Council of Europe Congress of Local and Regional Authorities, but also as a rapporteur on decentralisation within the Congress.

Our Congress, which has been formally in existence since 1994, began as the European Conference of Local Authorities, which held its first session as far back as January 1957. Since then, we have evolved to become a representative body of more than 200,000 territorial communities at the pan-European level, the only body mandated to monitor the development of local and regional democracy in our 46 member states.

It is clear that efforts to expedite decentralisation processes, in Europe and beyond, and reinforce local self-government are our main preoccupation, and here our mission coincides with that of UN-HABITAT. It is especially important today, against the background of the tremendous changes taking place in Europe – and worldwide – for the past fifteen years, which allowed the reunification of our continent on the basis of the shared values of democracy, respect for human rights, and the rule of law.

With the enlargement of the Council of Europe and then of the European Union, with disappearing borders and the increasing devolution of power towards the territorial level, with the transfer of competences from central governments in order to provide good governance and high-quality public services to our citizens – with all this, we now have a historic opportunity to raise territorial democracy to a new level.

The Congress is not new to the issue, having been working for local democracy for 50 years. It took quite some time to convince governments that decentralisation does not constitute interference with the affairs of the State, quite the opposite – it consolidates the very foundation on which a democratic society is based, improves public services and, therefore, satisfaction of our citizens with central governments as well. In a similar vein, we don’t see decentralisation as a counterweight to globalisation but as a complementary process.

Our efforts bore fruit with the adoption of the European Charter of Local Self-Government, this cornerstone treaty which laid down the basic principles which governments should apply when developing local self-government. Our power of conviction is reflected in the fact that to date, the Charter has been ratified by 42 out of the 46 Council of Europe member states.

All this makes us – the Council of Europe as a whole and the Congress in particular – a natural partner of UN-HABITAT in implementing in Europe your guidelines on decentralisation worldwide, the guidelines which we have been actively supporting from the very beginning. In a recommendation adopted by the Congress in November 2006, we asked the Committee of Ministers and governments of Council of Europe member states to give the draft guidelines their full support, and called for their adoption at this meeting of the Governing Council of UN-HABITAT.

It would be a timely decision in the era of not only globalisation but also of urbanisation, in the era of the growing power of cities, agglomerations, metropolitan areas. We all know, and especially those acting on the global scale like you in UN-HABITAT, about the rapid urban growth worldwide, “the city sprawl”, which puts an additional pressure on governments to act. Just a few days ago, I had a privilege of addressing the World Summit of Mayors in Istanbul, where I spoke about the rebirth of city power – much like it was in the ancient world of city states. External relations are no longer an exclusive issue of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs within national governments, which alone cannot cope with all the changes taking place in urban areas and meet the needs of the cities. The cities have to open themselves up to the world and engage in what we call City Diplomacy.

This is why these guidelines are so timely and important. We all know that all democracy, much as all politics, is local. This is why we hope that the Congress recommendation adopted last autumn will be heard and heeded.

Let us think globally but act locally.