29th Session of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe (Strasbourg, 20-22 October 2015)

New forms of local governance

Speaking notes for Mairi Evans, United Kingdom (L, NI) on behalf of the rapporteur Harry McGuigan, United Kingdom (L, SOC)

Mr President, colleagues,

It is my honour to present to you this report and draft resolution. Today’s debate and vote will mark the last but one stage of a piece of work that started almost two years ago.

 

I am happy that this overview of the state of local governance across Europe, and indeed of the state of local democracy covers 35 of the 47 Member States of the Council of Europe

 

I believe that its value is precisely in summarising in just a few pages the many changes, and challenges, currently facing local government. The picture is complex and sometimes contradictory amalgamation of councils, centralisation, introduction of performance management, more open ways of involving the community in local decisions, etc.

 

As we discussed in our meetings in the Governance Committee, overall the picture is a mixture of hope and worrying signs: in many European countries local government is facing an unprecedented threat to its very existence – indeed the crisis only did but to accelerate a trend that has been long happening.

 

I believe it is the first time that Congress carries out in a single report a comprehensive mapping of the very significant changes that local government is facing across Europe. Some of them are positive, many are also a threat to local democracy, some is caused by the financial crisis but there are also longer term trends at play.

We are covering 35 of the Member States of the Council of Europe. We are grateful to the many Congress Members that have contributed, as well as the national delegations, national and regional associations of Local Authorities, regional governments and academic experts that have provided detailed input for over the last year. The more so as the questionnaire and the issues we are covering are complex and diverse.

I would also like to thank my staff at the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, the Improvement Service of Scotland and the Congress secretariat for their support in preparing this report.

In our report we focus on five large trends we are seeing across Europe:

 

- contracts between central/regional authorities and municipalities; - we have found that in places such as Netherlands, France , Switzerland , Russia or Scotland make abundant use of such arrangements. However sometimes this is used as a form of fiscal control from the centre, especially as a result of the crisis, as such as for instance in Lithuania, Serbia, Bulgaria or Spain.

 

- agreements between municipalities and other public (and sometimes private) bodies to jointly provide public services – among others this is very significant in, for instance, Italy, Germany, Belgium, Sweden or France.

 

- performance management (including outcome-based contracts); we have found evidence on this in Scotland in particular, but also in Finland, Norway, Denmark and to a certain extent in Austria, Portugal and Spain.

 

-citizen participation (community involvement, co-determination, co-production, and participatory budgeting).  Very different examples abound across Europe, however we found that community involvement is greatly helped if Local Authorities are small in size, such as in Hungary or Turkey, but this is threatened with increased centralisation such as in the municipal restructuring in Greece and Wales.

 

The ongoing crisis has only accelerated the trend towards using these wider governance arrangements that go well beyond go well beyond the traditional roles of local and regional authorities as narrowly defined by law in a top down fashion. The picture is mixed, as discussed in the report in great detail.

 

There are positive consequences of these new forms of local governance:

 

• Making public decisions more measurable

• Making local democracy open to public participation and scrutiny

• Sharing resources amid increased demand of public services

• Partnerships as an alternative to centralisation or scrapping of public services

• Involvement of private and civil society resources and know how to co-produce public services.

 

There are also potential risks for Local and Regional Democracy:

• Use of contracts by central government to limit local and regional autonomy (centralisation through the back door)

• Excessive focus on targets might turn local policy making into mere management

• Allowing small groups of activist citizens to have an outsize influence in day to day local decisions versus the majority of citizens who vote for their representatives.

• Excessive involvement of private sector might weaken the case for publicly owned public services

 

For that reason we have drafted a draft resolution outlining political recommendations for Congress and we would very much welcome the comments from Members.

The resolution aims to reaffirm that the Charter of Local Self-Government is the essential framework that all these significant changes to local democracy must respect. In particular greater flexibility in forms of local and regional government can improve the lives of citizens.

In so doing the draft resolution aims to;

• Encouraging the sharing of experiences of these new forms of local governance through the Congress and networks of local and regional authorities;

• Call for restructuring in local government is not done at the expense of loss of local democratic accountability as defined in the Charter.

• Encourage the development of citizen involvement and participation in local government and that such arrangements are properly resources, in particular to ensure the more vulnerable parts of the local community can play an active role.

• Ensure that external contracts are carried out to improve local services and not as an tool to reduce them

• Work together to develop performance management systems for local and regional authorities, so they are able to reflect the realities of local public service delivery but prevent that this is used as a tool for unilateral control from the centre.

 

Chair, this is indeed a complex picture and I am sure that we have failed to capture all the diversity of changes facing local government across Europe. I believe however that in its brevity is a comprehensive picture of the challenges currently faced by municipalities. We would welcome your comments today, particularly on the resolution.

 

On the other hand local government continue to experiment with new ways to reinvent itself to better serve the community it represents.

Our report, has had the ambition to reflect all these contrast and the modesty in paining what it is only a pale image of a very complex picture.

 

As regards to the draft Resolution I do not think it is a particularly ambitious one. It is by contrast rather realistic. The changes of local government across Europe are so diverse that “one size fits all” solutions would not work.

However there are many things that Congress, and indeed all of us, can do to improve the state of local democracy across Europe. The Recommendations thus call for more exchanges of best practices across Member States, to introduce new guidelines that can reinforce the status of local government and its public accountability and public participation.

 

Ultimately we need to work together to prevent that new forms of local governance do not end up being a tool to undermine the local freedoms enshrined in the Charter of Local Self Government.

I invite the you  to support the Report and draft Resolution.

 

Thank you.