Council of Europe and Municipalities and Regions

Secretaries General and Directors Meeting of the National Sections and Associate Members

Kyiv, Ukraine, 23-24 September 2010

Speech by Antonella Cagnolati, Director of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities Council of Europe

Dear Mr President,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a great pleasure for me to speak to you today on the important subject of building partnerships on the ground and promoting local democracy, in particular in central and eastern Europe. Defending and strengthening local democracy is the core mission of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe, and fostering partnerships is a crucial means of achieving this objective and therefore a priority of the Congress action.

Our partnership with national associations of local and regional authorities, which you represent within the Council of European Municipalities and Regions, is of particular importance to the Congress. Associations play a key role of representing territorial communities at the level of the entire country, which makes them the main national interlocutor of the Congress, itself a pan-European political assembly of territorial governments and parliaments. We see national associations as our privileged partners in relaying Congress action in local and regional communities, promoting it in the national setting and contributing to our reports and recommendations, serving also as an “early warning system” for us when possible violations of the principles of local democracy take place.

This is why the Congress always seeks and welcomes the input of national associations, in order to expand our knowledge of the situation in your countries, and to target our action better. A concrete example of the Congress’ partnership with national associations, and CEMR as its representative body, was their 3^rd General meeting in Strasbourg exactly one week ago. This meeting was an excellent opportunity to exchange views not only on ways of strengthening this partnership, but also on the current reform of the Congress which is underway in order to increase the impact of its action and to make it more effective and more relevant to the expectations of our citizens.

I am convinced that in the context of the current economic crisis, not only the Congress but we all, also national associations and CEMR, need to look for innovative ways and new modalities of operation. The crisis situation always calls for an optimal use of reduced resources, and one way of optimising this use is pulling them together and organising joint activities, which would enable us to carry our action further and accomplish it better.

Last week, we also had the pleasure of welcoming CEMR and its Secretary General, Mr Frederic Vallier, to our meeting in Strasbourg. CEMR is a long-standing partner of the Congress because it plays a fundamental role both in coordinating the activities of national associations and in relaying – and supporting – Congress action at European level. CEMR provided its active support to many of our initiatives – such as the additional protocol to the European Charter of Local Self-Government, dealing with citizen participation at local level, or the draft European Charter of Regional Democracy, proposed by the Congress.

Whereas associations do not have an institutional role within the Congress, they are represented within CEMR, which makes our close partnership so important. Both the meeting of 16 September in Strasbourg and this meeting today are tangible examples of our co-operation, which – I am certain – will only be strengthened and expanded in the future.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Promoting a coordinated approach to the common issues of concern is a crucial aspect of any partnership. This meeting gives us an opportunity to compare our work, and eventually join our efforts, in addressing an issue which is important to all of us: the situation of local and regional democracy in central and eastern European countries. This is an opportunity for all of us to share our experience with regard to these countries. In the case of the Congress, this is the experience acquired through our monitoring, observation of local and regional elections and specific projects that we have carried out in central and eastern Europe – such as, for instance, the question of regionalisation in Ukraine or the setting-up of the National Association of Local Authorities in Georgia, NALAG.

However, I realise very well that not all of you may be fully aware of the Congress’ work and methodology, so allow me first to make a brief presentation of our approach.

The Congress is a political assembly within the Council of Europe which brings together 636 elected representatives from municipalities and regions of both all the countries of the European Union and twenty other European countries. In partnership with other European organisations, such as CEMR, and national associations of local and regional authorities, the Congress works to advance local and regional democracy across our continent. On the practical level, our core mission is to monitor, first and foremost, the implementation of the European Charter of Local Self-Government, but also the respect of the obligations which stem from other Council of Europe conventions and treaties, inasmuch as these obligations relate to the local and regional level. So, we are guided in our work by the acquis of the Council of Europe as a whole.

Our mechanisms include regular county-specific monitoring, observation of local and regional elections – which is an activity complementary to monitoring – and fact-finding missions to look into particular situations of concern. During both monitoring and election observation missions, our first objective is to assess the overall situation, which is to say the political system of the country, the legal framework, administrative practice and the role of the media. Our rapporteurs meet a wide range of political actors, local and regional authorities, civil society, experts, who help to draw a complete picture. I would like to stress yet again that the Congress relies to a great extent in this work on national associations, which are consulted in the preparation of our reports.

The rapporteurs then identify the drawbacks and shortcomings – issues that are not in conformity with Council of Europe standards, things that do not work in practice – and draft a recommendation for improving the situation. Our recommendations are addressed to the Committee of Ministers of the 47 member states, which transmits them to national governments. The governments are required to respond to our recommendations, and the Congress holds regular exchanges of views on their implementation with government representatives, mostly during our plenary sessions.

Most importantly, this process is part of an ongoing dialogue with both national and territorial authorities, and the Congress is currently moving to introduce post-monitoring and post-observation assistance to help the countries’ authorities to implement our recommendations. Finally, our rules for monitoring and election observation have just been codified in the form of official documents, adopted last June.

Our monitoring and election observation have allowed us to build up substantial knowledge of the situation in central and eastern Europe. All of central and eastern European countries have been subject to Congress monitoring reports and recommendations at least once, and follow-up reports are currently being prepared on some of them. This year alone, we will have carried out monitoring missions to Montenegro, Romania, the Russian Federation, Serbia and Slovenia, and had to postpone similar visits to Moldova and Ukraine due to elections in those countries. Over the past year and a half, we have also observed local elections in all three countries of South Caucasus and adopted post-observation recommendations on Armenia and Azerbaijan, with a recommendation on Georgia to be adopted at the next session of the Congress in October. Also in October, the Congress will observe local elections in Ukraine.

I invite you to take up these recommendations in your activities. Once adopted, the Congress’ texts must become “alive” at the national level, in order to be effective. We must ensure a follow-up to their implementation in your countries, and a key role in making it happen belongs to national associations.

This would be a crucial part of the associations’ contribution to the work of the Congress, and to our partnership – in addition to their input into our monitoring exercise, which I have already mentioned. Furthermore, in 2006 the Congress invited representatives of national associations to take part in our election observation missions; however, until now such participation took place only on two occasions.

We hope that associations will become more active in this respect as well, and will show greater commitment to putting our partnership into practice in tangible terms. Of course, we count on the support and active involvement of CEMR to help us in this mission – which is our common mission, which contributes to our common cause of strengthening local and regional democracy in Europe.

This is why I look forward to our discussions today with great interest.

Thank you.