Strasbourg, 27 November 2009 LR-FS(2009)9
EUROPEAN COMMITTEE ON LOCAL AND REGIONAL DEMOCRACY
(CDLR)
COMMITTEE OF EXPERTS ON LOCAL AND REGIONAL
FINANCE AND PUBLIC SERVICES
(LR-FS)
PROPOSALS FOR OTHER ACTIVITIES IN THE FIELD OF LOCAL AND REGIONAL FINANCE AND SERVICES
TO IMPLEMENT THE UTRECHT AGENDA
Secretariat Memorandum
prepared by the Directorate General of
Democracy and Political Affairs
Directorate of Democratic Institutions
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Introduction
At the 16th Session of the Council of Europe Conference of Ministers responsible for local and regional government, held in Utrecht (the Netherlands) on 16-17 November 2009, Ministers adopted the Utrecht Declaration. This document (MCL-16(2009)12) has been sent to all members of the LR-FS Committee and is available on the web-site.
Ministers adopted, inter alia, the Utrecht Agenda in which they, by means of a vote, prioritised the challenges to be addressed. The challenges were thus given the following order of priority:
1. Managing the impact of the current financial/economic crisis
- Addressing the low level of democratic participation in public life at local and regional level
- Reducing the complexity and cost of the current system of local and regional government and enhancing its efficiency
- Enhancing the capacity for and quality of governance in local and regional communities or authorities
- Addressing the impact of demographic/migration trends
- Improving access to public services delivered at local and regional level
- Making it easier for local and regional authorities to co-operate across frontiers
- Addressing territorial inequalities between and within local and regional authorities
- Addressing the growing divide between rural and urban areas
- Strengthening social cohesion and acting against the increase of political and religious radicalisation
- Fighting corruption in local and regional authorities
- Addressing the growing impact of the digital divide on citizen participation
- Addressing the expansion of big conurbations at the expense of medium/small sized cities and villages.
The Utrecht Declaration instructs CDLR members draw up at the Committee’s meeting in Spring 2010 a concrete programme of activities for the years 2010-2013 that reflects the priority the ministers have given to the challenges, takes account of the priority given to actions at national and regional level and determines outputs that meet the highest possible level of support.
It is suggested that the LR-FS Committee, at its meeting in December 2009, could already give consideration to this question from the perspective of local and regional finance and services and could make suggestions for concrete activities to be undertaken by the CDLR. Members are therefore invited to make suggestions before and at the meeting.
Attention is drawn to the fact that in order to prepare the CDLR meeting in March, a questionnaire to all CDLR members is being sent out, asking them to put forward proposals for concrete activities for the implementation of the Utrecht Agenda as a whole. Members of the LR-FS Committee are therefore invited to co-ordinate their input with the CDLR member(s) from their country.
Finally, attention is drawn to the fact that Ministers adopted a specific Declaration on the impact of the financial/economic crisis on local and regional government, the implementation of which is the subject of a separate document (LR-FS (2009)8).
Action required
The Committee is invited to make suggestions to the CDLR for concrete activities to implement the Utrecht Agenda from the perspective of local and regional finance and services. Members are invited to put forward proposals to this effect.
In carrying out this work, the Committee is to have regard to the other items on the agenda of its meeting that have a bearing on possible future work (see documents LR-FS(2009) 6,7,8 and 10).