Regional Seminars in Yeghegnadzor and Aghveran, Armenia

Speech by Juliana Hoxha, Vice-President of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities

European perspective on citizen participation

14 & 16 July 2015

Dear colleagues, dear participants,

On behalf of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe, which I am honoured to represent today, I would like to welcome you to this seminar in Yeghegnadzor / Aghveran on ”Promoting citizen participation in Armenia ”. I would like to underline that it is the second edition of such a series of seminars: last year, in Gyumri and Sisian, in September 2014, you discussed ways of “Fostering Local Democracy in Armenia”. These seminars were successful and I wish us the same success for this year. I am also very pleased to note that several mayors who took a very active part in our previous activities are present (with us) today and I want to thank them for their participation and commitment.

It is a great pleasure for me to be here in Armenia and I would like to say a few words on how the Congress works and how it contributes to the Council of Europe’s Action Plan for Armenia.  As you may be aware, local democracy and citizen participation at local level are a core value defended and encouraged by the Congress. We promote the principles enshrined in the European Charter for Local Self-Government and in its Additional Protocol of the Charter on the right to participate in the affairs of a local authority, and we monitor its implementation.

This year we are celebrating the 30th anniversary of the opening to the signature of the Charter which is now ratified by all 47 member states and which affirms, in its Preamble, the right of citizens to participate in local affairs, and requires the principle of local self-government to be embedded in the domestic law. It also requires compliance with a number of basic principles to which no reservation is possible and this includes the right of citizens to participate in local decision making.

Additional provisions for this right to be guaranteed were set up in 2009 with the Additional Protocol.  This includes that the organic law should provide all the possible means for facilitating the exercise of this right, within the framework of the national constitutional order. A variety of  procedures are promoted to allow citizen participation such as consultative processes, local referendums, petitions…, as well as the use of information and communication technologies to ensure the widest possible coverage.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Today I am proud to announce that this protocol is in force and it has been ratified by 12 member states of the Council of Europe and signed by 7.  In this connection, I would like to congratulate Armenia for ratifying it and translating it very quickly into the national legislative order.

Citizen participation is the prerequisite of local democracy. In recent years, Armenia has taken a step forward by undertaking an important path of reforms in the field of local government, including steps for a much needed territorial-administrative reform. These reforms are directly connected with the implementation of some of the recommendations adopted by the Congress in March 2014, which underlined the efforts made to implement the provisions of the Charter and welcomed the ratification of the Additional Protocol to the Charter.

This new legislative framework, its implementation and the local initiatives the Congress is supporting, and which we are going to discuss today, is the sign of a strong and active will of the Armenian authorities to include its population in the decision-making process. This is necessary in our democracies today, older or newer ones, to fight the growing distrust expressed by the population towards the public authorities.

This is even more relevant in the case of Armenia since the 2014 report noted with concern that there is no viable tradition of direct citizens’ participation in local governance within the country. Moreover, the report emphasized the widespread traditional distrust of local authorities, and that the democratic culture did not yet encourage direct participation for citizens. It was thus recommended to Armenian authorities to apply instruments promoting citizen participation on a local level, in order to seek opportunities to stimulate local residents’ interest in their work and achievements.

In this respect, the activities implemented by the Congress in Armenia are aimed at developing the competencies of local elected representatives, fostering dialogue among local authorities- between them and with the central authorities- enhancing citizen participation in the decision-making at local level and strengthening capacities of the Communities Association of Armenia.

We believe that mayors and municipal councilors need to be supported in this endeavor. The dissemination of good practices that can be replicated and the peer-to-peer exchanges can help local elected representatives to engage in discussions at national level, in order to influence the reform process and create opportunities for further participation and co-decision among their citizens.

This regional seminar takes place in the framework of the project “Strengthening Local Elected Representatives’ Leadership” which is implemented by the Congress as part of the programme “Support To Consolidating Local Democracy in Armenia”. We have been aiming to assist communities to put into practice the aforementioned provisions and to enhance citizen participation in the decision making process at a local level. Therefore, the day is divided in a two-part programme, allowing a presentation of the best practices supported by the Council of Europe, and exchanges between all participants on all relevant issues.

You will also be hearing about the new initiative introduced recently by the Congress to directly support  local initiatives. We will hear the mayors of the four communities which are benefiting from this support: the mayors of Artik, of Urtsadzor, of Vardenik and of Akhtala. They have been selected through a competitive process and are receiving the support of Congress experts.

We look forward to hearing which steps they have already taken as they launched citizen participation processes with their respective residents to identify, to prioritize and to find shared solutions to urgent community problems. We hope that this experience will be a success and that we will be able to replicate it at a broader scale in Armenia and beyond, for instance in the other countries of the Eastern Partnership (Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine).

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Before concluding I would like to emphasize that we strongly believe that including citizens in the decision-making on a local level, especially in the challenging context of social and political crisis, is one of the ways forward. This is why the Congress reiterated its involvement in the promotion and support of local participation as part of its 2013-2016 priorities. In this regard, I would also like to mention a pan-European initiative launched by the Congress eight years ago which you could all contribute to. I mean: the European Local Democracy Week.During the week in October, local authorities from all the 47 member states of the Council of Europe organise public events to meet and engage with their citizens on issues of current interest. The aim is to promote and foster democratic participation at a local level. The 2015 edition of the ELDW chose as a theme: “Living together in multicultural societies: respect, dialogue, interaction”, to echo recent events, in particular the terrorist attacks of January 2015 in Paris and several other European cities and beyond, and the threat they pose to the common European values.

Finally, I would like to take this occasion to thank all the partners involved in this event and say a special thank you to the government of Denmark, which made of this all possible. Once again, thank you all for taking part in this seminar and I wish us all a fruitful and stimulating discussion.

Thank you for your attention.