1098th MEETING OF THE MINISTERS’ DEPUTIES 

Strasbourg, 17 November 2010

Speech by President Keith Whitmore, Congress of Local and Regional Authorities,

Council of Europe

Mr President Batibay,

Committee of Ministers’ Deputies,

Excellencies,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is an honour for me to address you for the first time in my capacity as President of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe. I would like to start by extending my congratulations to you, Mr President, and to your country which has been in the chair of this Committee for one week now. I wish you every success in this Presidency, during which, we are confident, some important decisions will be made with regard to the reform of this Organisation.

For its part, the Congress has been advancing with its own reform process. Three weeks ago, during the 19^th Session of the Congress, its members adopted ambitious reform proposals seeking to render our institution more capable of making a much better, targeted contribution to the overall objectives of the Council of Europe. We see these changes as part of the broader reform of this Organisation, launched by Secretary General Jagland with your support, and spearheaded by you, the Committee of Ministers.

This is why we count on your active support to our efforts. With the decisions of the 19^th Session, our reform has entered its implementation stage. As President of the Congress, I am fully committed to pursuing this process and seeing it though to its completion. However, our proposals require amendments to the Congress Charter, and we are asking this Committee to approve them. We strongly hope that you will attend to this matter swiftly and treat our proposals in time for our next session in March 2011.

We are asking you in particular to extend the mandate of Congress members from two to four years, to allow for their greater, continuous participation in our work, to enable them to pursue long-term initiatives within the Congress without interruption and thus ensure better continuity of our action. In this regard, our counterpart in the European Union, the Committee of the Regions, has had a five-year mandate for its members since the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty.

We are also asking you to approve our proposal to replace the Standing Committee with a new Statutory Forum involving all heads of national delegations, which will ensure better representation and greater participation of Congress members in this body acting on behalf of the Congress. Finally, we are asking for your approval of the provision clarifying and reinforcing the rule of the minimum 30 per cent representation of women in national delegations, by applying this requirement to both full members and their substitutes.

As part of the reform package, Congress members also adopted new political priorities for the next two years, which will refocus our work on five key areas, and set up three new statutory committees to pursue these priorities. The details are explained in the adopted texts which have been submitted to you. You will also find a detailed description of the Congress activities in recent months in the communication of the Secretary General which has been distributed at this meeting.

I would like to point out two aspects of the reform which I see as the new initiatives for the Congress and its relations with member States.

First, the introduction of real assistance to address the problems identified during our monitoring process and observation of local and regional elections. The objective of this assistance is to help both central governments and territorial authorities to improve the situation, to improve democratic governance of their communities, by offering the Congress’ expertise and the national, regional and local experience and best practices from across the continent.

The introduction of such assistance also aims to emphasise that our monitoring and election observation are not equivalent to the work of some local and regional police of Europe – it is all about stretching a helping hand and assisting member States that counts most in our work.

In the same spirit, the second initiative is to include the local and regional dimension of human rights in our activities. Let us be clear: we are speaking not about looking into alleged violations of individual rights, but about ensuring the local and regional framework and raising awareness for the human rights implementation.

In other words, we want to make sure that the conditions exist in our communities for the full exercise of these rights. From this perspective, local and regional authorities are already playing a key role in providing access to human rights, from housing to health care to schooling and even higher education in certain regions.

This is why we need to raise awareness of these issues and to contribute to improving the human rights situation at grassroots – through experience-sharing, through our expertise and our assistance. We see it as a new element to our assessment of the situation of local and regional democracy, and as part of our contribution to advancing one of the core objectives of this Organisation, which is respect for human rights. As a channel for disseminating the Council of Europe values and objectives at territorial level, the Congress is best placed to contribute to this Organisation’s work on human rights in local and regional communities, and to help territorial authorities to make sure that the rights of all community residents are respected, and that they enjoy equal opportunities in exercising them.

We are currently discussing ways of working with national governments within the Chaves Group, and I’m sure that this subject will be taken up in your discussions on human rights in December.

In conclusion, I would like to underline that both these initiatives – assistance and the human rights dimension – imply a strengthened and more regular dialogue between the Congress and member States. We stand ready to engage to a much greater extent in such dialogue – be it within the Chaves Group, within CDLR, with you in the Committee of Ministers, and with individual national governments.

For all of us, this reform means more continuity and coherence of our action and less bureaucracy, with fewer bureaucratic hurdles in the way. We are asking you to treat our proposals in the same spirit and adopt the necessary amendments to the Congress’ Charter. This will enable us to advance with this process, and to keep up with the pace of the overall reform of the Council of Europe.

Thank you.