3rd General Meeting of the

National Associations of local and regional authorities

Strasbourg, 16 September 2010

Speech by Ian MICALLEF, President a.i. and Rapporteur of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities, Council of Europe

Priorities 2011-2012

Dear friends

At our next session we will need to set the new orientations that the Congress will follow during its next mandate

I am pleased to present this document "Priorities 2011-2012", which is the fruit of long discussions, not least the discussions that I have had the privilege of having with the Committee of Ministers and the new Secretary General Thorbjørn Jagland.

You will see that these priorities aim to make the Congress a more dynamic and relevant political body.  They are completely in line with the new orientation for the Council of Europe that the Secretary General is promoting.  The Congress is taking a lead in this respect and can hold its head high.

By focussing more on the core activities of monitoring, election observation and human rights, the Congress will demonstrate its unique and vital role as the watchdog of local and regional democracy in Europe. 

You will see that we have identified 5 pillars for our action:

1.       The main thrust of the new priorities will be to upgrade the monitoring activities of the Congress, to ensure that our monitoring is more systematic and rigorous and has greater impact.

The Congress has a unique role when it comes to monitoring local democracy in Europe. We are the guardian of the European Charter of Local Self-Government and I believe that this is the aspect of our work which has the most impact in our member states.

2.       In the same vein we propose to develop the election observation activities, bearing in mind that we are the only international organisation to systematically monitor local and regional elections with local and regional elected members. Election observation is complementary to our monitoring exercise and cannot be limited to the polling day alone, but should cover the whole electoral process and legal framework, to have a complete picture of the situation.

3        We should not limit our monitoring activities to making recommendations, we should also be offering our expertise to help our member States implement the changes that we are proposing. This is the third priority - we refer to it as "targeted assistance".

4        Our fourth priority is to pay more attention to human rights. We are becoming increasingly aware that we cannot have good governance at local level and a good quality of local democracy where human rights are not respected.

This is the sine qua non of democracy, a fact that has been repeatedly stressed by the Committee of Ministers and all the main instances of our organisation, which is the unique reference in Europe in this field.

5        Finally we propose to streamline our thematic activities, ensuring that they are fully in line with our core values.

So, we have 5 clear priorities, which will provide a solid guide for this political body during the next two years.  This text marks a new departure for a Congress that is becoming increasingly confident of its value on the European stage.

This text has already been the subject of several debates, and each time has been refined as a result. I presented a first proposal of this text to the Bureau of the Congress in May, and a revised text in June. This was then examined by the Standing Committee, where it was well received.

Following the Standing Committee, a wide consultation of our members and national associations was undertaken, to gather further comments and suggestions on this document as well as the proposals for the reform of the Congress. A compendium of the replies received has been prepared for you today. I have tried to integrate as many of the comments received as possible into the revised document, and I take the opportunity to thank those of you who have already contributed to this work..

I can therefore thoroughly recommend this text, which I believe will set us on the right course for the next two years. Needless to say, we need not only your input today, but also an active contribution of national associations to the Congress’ action in pursuing these priorities, be it monitoring or election observation reports, assistance programmes or thematic activities.

However, I don't want to give you the impression that the text is already finalised. There is still room for improvement, and if I am presenting it to you today, it is because I am keen to hear your reactions.