Strasbourg, 2 October 2009                                                                LR-IC(2009)11

                                                                                                                       

EUROPEAN COMMITTEE ON LOCAL AND REGIONAL DEMOCRACY

(CDLR)

COMMITTEE OF EXPERTS ON LOCAL AND REGIONAL GOVERNMENT INSTITUTIONS AND CO-OPERATION

(LR-IC)

PREPARATION OF THE APPENDIX TO PROTOCOL No. 3

TO THE MADRID OUTLINE CONVENTION

Secretariat Memorandum

prepared by the

Directorate General of Democracy and Political Affairs

Directorate of Democratic Institutions

This document is public. It will not be distributed at the meeting. Please bring this copy.

Ce document est public. Il ne sera pas distribué en réunion. Prière de vous munir de cet exemplaire.

Introduction

Protocol No.3 to the Madrid Outline Convention on Transfrontier Co-operation between Territorial Communities or Authorities provides, in Article 13, paragraph 2, that "In order to facilitate implementation of this Protocol, an appendix will provide the more detailed, but optional provisions for the establishment and operation of ECGs".

The European Committee on Local and Regional Democracy has instructed the LR-IC to draft this appendix, if necessary with the assistance of a consultant (CDLR(2009)24).

Following consultations between the Secretariat and Professor Yves Lejeune, who has stated his availability for this task, the approach described below is proposed.

With a view to facilitating subsequent legislative work, two sets of provisions would be drawn up, one set applicable to private-law ECGs, the other to public-law ECGs.

 

Within each "bundle" of provisions, variants designed to take account of certain states' constitutional constraints would be proposed. These constraints or specific situations would be identified with the help of a list of questions drawn up by the expert in advance for the states concerned.

The provisions proposed in the appendices could also be differentiated according to ECGs' tasks and purpose: consultation or coordination groupings, groupings assigned to a specific public-service role, etc.

Variants will allow account to be taken of the fact that certain potential members of an ECG have, under domestic law, wider (or narrower) competences than others.

Furthermore, proposed texts could serve to facilitate the drafting of the statutes of ECGs, which need to regulate in detail the matters mentioned in the Protocol.

Drawn up with the consultant's assistance, a questionnaire would be sent out early in 2010 in order to collect from member states information about the constitutional and legislative framework for transfrontier co-operation between territorial communities or authorities, and about any legislation in place - in European Union member states - to facilitate implementation of Regulation EC 1082/2006.

On the basis of the information thus obtained, an initial draft of the appendices could be prepared by the consultant and examined by the LR-IC in the second half of 2010. The full text could be finalised, at LR-IC level, by the end of 2011.

Action required

The Committee is invited to hold an exchange of views on the arrangements for implementation of this activity, as detailed above, and to approve these.