19th Session of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities - State of the Congress
Strasbourg, Plenary Session – 26 October 2010
Speech by Ian Micallef, Outgoing President a.i. of the Congress
Dear colleagues,
Only a year ago, in this Hemicycle, as we were celebrating 60 years of the Council of Europe, we proudly reaffirmed the mission of our Congress as the guardian of local and regional democracy, the watchdog of its good health, and the driving force for better territorial governance across our continent. We spoke of the need for the Congress to be better equipped to pursue this mission, and to be more relevant to our citizens and communities.
As we began this year, we were still in the process of reflection, still formulating proposals on how to refocus Congress activities and to increase the impact of its action. At the last session of the Congress, in March, I said that we needed to move, quickly, from reflection to action, from analysis to implementation. This was a real challenge, I pointed out.
Today, I can say that we have risen to this challenge, that we have met it standing tall. The distance we have covered over one year, indeed in only seven months since the March session, is truly impressive. We have come to this 19th Session with a complete package of concrete proposals for reform of the Congress, which are meant to breathe in a new life into this institution.
This session is not just another session of Congress renewal. True, we have many new members amongst us, and I welcome them into our ranks. We are electing new Congress leadership, as we have done every two years in the past. But tomorrow, we will act on the far-reaching proposals to change the way we do business. After acknowledging the need to ensure that Congress activities are more targeted and reflect our specific added value and unique mission, we will adopt new political priorities for the next two years, refocused on five key areas.
We will put a much greater emphasis on our core mission, that of monitoring the situation of local and regional democracy. We will expand the scope of observation of local and regional elections, which is complementary to our monitoring. We will introduce the task of monitoring the implementation of human rights in our communities. We will streamline our thematic activities. Finally, we will propose assistance to national and territorial authorities, targeted on the problems we see in their countries, to make sure that our recommendations don’t fall on deaf ears and have a concrete and tangible follow-up.
Dear colleagues,
The objective of this reform is to make the Congress better adapted and more capable of pursuing its mission as the main contributor to the Council of Europe’s action in the field of democracy and human rights at territorial level. To adjust the structures and working methods of the Congress to its priorities, the Rapporteurs and the Bureau have proposed a package of changes on which you will also decide tomorrow.
I will not go into the details of these proposals which are all before you, and which you will have time to debate tomorrow. I do want, however, to thank and congratulate all those of you who have been actively engaged in the reform process, in formulating and drafting proposals for change and in providing your input during the consultation period – rapporteurs, members of the Congress Bureau and other members of the Congress, national and European associations of local and regional authorities, and members of the Congress Secretariat.
The milestones of this process this year, in only seven months since the March session, included an extraordinary meeting of the Bureau on 12 April and its meetings on 21 May and 17 June, the decisions of the Standing Committee on 18 June, input from associations of local and regional authorities at the 3rd General Meeting of their representatives on 16 September in Strasbourg, and final proposals adopted by the Bureau on 17 September. Five reports were prepared during this process: on priorities for 2011-2012 and on the reform of structures and working methods (these two will be debated tomorrow), on new rules of procedure both for monitoring and for election observation, as well as on the Congress’ budget (these three were adopted by the Standing Committee in June 2010).
The first visible result of the reform was an increased pace for our monitoring activities, with some 15 monitoring missions that have been scheduled for 2010, three times more than in the previous year. The Congress has already carried out monitoring missions to Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Malta, Montenegro, Romania, Russian Federation, Serbia and Turkey. More missions are planned before the end of the year – to Bulgaria, Finland, France, Latvia and Slovenia, this bearing in mind that visits to Moldova and Ukraine had to be postponed to the next year due to elections in these countries. Moreover, at its March session, the Congress debated reports and adopted recommendations on the situation of local democracy in Iceland and regional democracy in Switzerland. During the same period, we have observed local elections in Azerbaijan in December 2009 and in Georgia in May 2010, and will observe local elections in Ukraine at the end of this week.
With the exception of France yet to be monitored, and with the first-time monitoring reports on Austria, Belgium and Serbia still in progress, we have completed the first monitoring cycle of the 44 member states which have, to date, ratified the European Charter of Local Self-Government. At the same time, our efforts to encourage the ratification of the Charter by the three remaining member states – which are Andorra, Monaco and San Marino – will see their first success during this session, with Andorra signing the Charter on Wednesday, as a first step towards its ratification.
Among other highlights of the year I would mention an international conference in Messina, Italy, on fighting corruption at local and regional level, held in May. The Congress organised it together with the European Union’s Committee of the Regions – which is a concrete result of our co-operation in itself – but most importantly, the conference laid the ground for action in this area at European level, starting with a code of conduct which is currently under preparation by the Congress. I should also mention that the Congress has successfully coordinated the organisation of the European Local Democracy Week, from 11 to 17 October, in towns and cities across the continent, 2010 being the first year when we are fully in charge of this event within the Council of Europe. Finally, just last week, a large Congress delegation participated in the Forum for the Future of Democracy in Yerevan and actively contributed to the discussions at the Forum, which sought to identify strategic approaches to strengthening good democratic governance in Europe.
Dear colleagues,
With the decisions to be adopted at this session, the process of the Congress reform will be entering a new stage – an implementation stage. However, its success lies in your active engagement in this process, your commitment to support this action and your drive to put it into practice. After all, this reform is all about the ownership of the Congress and its activities by its members – by all of us present here – and about our active participation.
The Congress rapporteurs and Bureau have done their job. It is now up to you to see it through, and to make it work. I count on your resolve, and I am confident that our reform efforts will be crowned with great success. I am convinced that a new, reformed Congress will emerge on the European political scene, set to pursue with vigour and dynamism its core mission of monitoring and strengthening territorial democracy across our continent, improving local and regional governance, and taking up the challenges faced by our communities and their authorities, for the benefit of all Europeans.
Thank you.