Inaugural meeting of the Euro-Mediterranean Regional and Local Assembly (ARLEM)

Barcelona (Spain) 21 January 2010

Speech by acting President Ian Micallef, Congress of Local and Regional Authorities, Council of Europe

Mr President,

Excellencies,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Dear colleagues,

It is a great honour for me to address you today as we celebrate the birth of a new pan-Mediterranean institution, an assembly of local and regional authorities for the Euro-Mediterranean, ARLEM. This is an assembly which is destined to bring the territorial dimension to the Union for the Mediterranean, and which is the formidable result of the initiative and efforts of the Committee of the Regions and its President, Mr Luc Van den Brande.

It is a particular honour as today I am representing the three main components of this institution:

– ARLEM proper, as a member of the new assembly;

- the institutional component of one of the founders and main stakeholders – the Committee of the Regions, as First Vice-President of RELEX; and,

- the partnership component of one of the future observers in ARLEM, as acting President of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe.

However, I do not feel divided but rather empowered by these three capacities, which is the kind of convergence which we will seek within ARLEM in order to create synergies and put the experience of every one to best use.

Allow me to start as a representative of the founding institution, the Committee of the Regions, which has put its full political weight behind the Euro-Mediterranean project.

Much as the Union for the Mediterranean, ARLEM is born out of our conviction that the Mediterranean basin is crucial for stability and peace in Europe as a whole. Indeed, Europe and the southern shore of the Mediterranean share not only a common history and cultural heritage, traditions of economic exchanges and migration flows – most importantly, they share a common future. This is why for many years now, we have been witnessing the growing recognition of the need for greater cooperation within the Euro- Mediterranean, and the process of bringing together the two shores to face common economic and social challenges.

The Barcelona process and the creation of the Union for the Mediterranean is the logical consequence of this rapprochement, which reflects the need for engaging our neighbours on the southern shore of the Mediterranean in creating a common space for North-South cooperation, intercultural dialogue and mutual understanding – a space of democratic values, stability and sustainable socio-economic development.

However, the process of building this space cannot be limited to governments alone. National development starts with local and regional communities, which should also be the main beneficiaries of development processes, and democracy is built from the grassroots. ARLEM stems from the imperative to involve all levels of governance in the Euro-Mediterranean cooperation and create a platform for local and regional interaction in the Euro-Mediterranean space.

An important final step to today’s event was the meeting on 1 December in Brussels. This meeting not only affirmed ARLEM as a platform for North-South cooperation and political dialogue between the two shores, but also clarified the role of each actor in this framework. In this regard, I would like to recall the statement by the President of the European Regions with Legislative Power, Ms Mercedes Bresso, who put a special emphasis on the role of observer and partner institutions. She spoke of the need for all the different organisations and institutions to be involved in the ARLEM cooperation framework, in the spirit of complementarity.

Indeed, it is our will, the will of RELEX, the will of the Committee of the Regions to make ARLEM a strong, relevant and efficient institution on the Euro-Mediterranean landscape. To realise its full potential, we must take on board all the actors and stakeholders – not only the Committee of the Regions and national associations of local and regional authorities, which are represented in the new Assembly, but also intergovernmental and non-governmental organisations and institutional bodies which will have observer status and which have an extremely important role to play in the success of this endeavour.

And here I cannot but say a few words in my capacity as acting President of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe, a long-standing partner of the Committee of the Regions in the European political architecture. Much as the Committee, the Congress attaches great importance to broadening and strengthening Euro-Mediterranean cooperation, and it is fully committed to sharing its rich and wide-ranging experience and acquis with our Mediterranean neighbours.

The Congress has been fully supporting the initiative to create ARLEM. In fact, it has been advocating for a long time the setting-up of a permanent structure for local and regional authorities, similar to the Euro-Med Parliamentary Assembly, the EMPA, and it stands ready to participate in the creation of a common, homogenous space of local and regional democracy in the Euro-Mediterranean basin.

It was less than a year ago, in March 2009, that the Congress held a debate on the role of local and regional authorities in enlarging Euro-Mediterranean cooperation, where we were delighted to hear the presentation of the ARLEM initiative by Mr Luc Van den Brande. We were particularly pleased to hear the assessment that the role of the Congress within this structure for the implementation of decentralised cooperation in the Euro-Mediterranean region will be significant.

The commitment of the Congress to the Mediterranean region goes back a long way. In 1985, for example, we organised, together with the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the first conference of Mediterranean Regions. We have been actively involved in fostering Euro-Arab cities’ dialogue, which was launched with the signing of the friendship and co-operation agreement between Arab and European towns in Valencia, Spain, in 1984. This process, which included two Conferences of Euro-Arab Towns (in Marrakesh, Morocco, in October 1988 and Valencia in September 1994) gained a new momentum with the Euro-Arab Cities’ Forum in Dubai in February 2008, co-organised by the Congress.

The Congress has already helped the local authorities of several countries in the Maghreb and the Middle East to acquire more modern and more democratic structures, the first being Morocco, where it helped to set up a national association of local authorities. It has just set up a new working group of cities and provinces of the Euro-Mediterranean –  “DEMOMED” – to strengthen local democracy in these countries and more effectively determine our strategies with them.

In other words, the Congress has much to contribute to the work of ARLEM and it stands ready to share its experience and expertise through the full participation in the new Assembly.

First, our action must involve promoting our local-government "tool-kit" – our main reference texts, the acquis of the Congress, such as the European Charter of Local Self-Government, the European Code of conduct for the political integrity of local and regional elected representatives, or the European Urban Charter II: Manifesto for a new urbanity, to name but a few.

Second, we should consider setting up structures similar to local democracy agencies in South-East Europe and South Caucasus, one of the most successful Congress initiatives. Third, we should actively promote and use more efficiently City Diplomacy and its initiatives aimed at conflict prevention and post-conflict reconstruction, first and foremost in the Middle East, where peace remains the principal challenge of Euro-Mediterranean dialogue. For example, initiatives aimed at providing education and training for young people is something that local authorities can implement effectively.

These proposed steps are fully in line with the ARLEM objectives that feature in the draft conclusions of today’s meeting. They will certainly contribute to bringing citizens closer to the Euro-Mediterranean dialogue, which is the declared aim of this new Assembly. With its pan-European dimension of 47 countries, the Congress can offer the vast experience of communities, including those that have just acquired a difficult knowledge of transition to democracy and post-conflict reconstruction. And if one of the ARLEM objectives, set out in the draft conclusions, is to put the long-standing experience of local and regional authorities on the ground at the service of the Euro-Mediterranean projects, then the wealth of contacts, expertise and commitment of the Congress to planting grassroots democracy in the Mediterranean region will be of great benefit to the activities of the new Assembly.

We look forward to our future cooperation, cooperation not only between the Committee of the Regions and national associations, but also between the Committee and its institutional partners, in particular with the Congress of the Council of Europe, with which the Committee just signed a revised cooperation agreement in November last year. Let us join our efforts and work together to span the two shores and create a space of cooperation, peace and stability across the sea that used to divide us, but that unites us today.

Thank you.