109th Plenary Session of the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe - Venice, Italy

9 December 2016

Speech by Leen Verbeek, Vice-president of the Congress and Chair of the Monitoring Committee

President,

Dear members,

Good morning and thank you for this opportunity to be here in Venice.

Since this is my very first statement before this distinguished Commission, allow me a few words on my background.

In my home country, the Netherlands, I am King’s Commissioner in the Province of Flevoland – this corresponds, overall, to the political function of a Governor.

Flevoland is a young Dutch province that exists for only 30 years.

Its territory used to be the bottom of the sea.

In line with ancient Dutch traditions we conquered this land from the sea and as a governor I am currently responsible for the further development of this area. New cities, an airport, harbors, nature, agriculture, infrastructure and so on.

I have been member of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities for seven years now and amongst others involved in monitoring activities and the fight against radicalization.

I have also been active on Turkey, Estonia, Spain and Slovakia and building networks of larger cities to fight radicalization, which are quite successful I may say.

You may know that I was elected Chair of the Monitoring Committee in October and – in this capacity – it is my pleasure to represent the Congress at the meetings of the Venice Commission.

This has to do with the fact that the Monitoring Committee is dealing with issues that are probably the most normative at the Congress - including constitutional questions relating to local and regional democracy.

The monitoring activities of the Congress represent an open door to improve the quality of democracy at local and regional level, ensuring free and fair elections at grassroots’ level being a part of this endeavor.

It was a political decision made by the Congress to put the monitoring and the observation of local and regional elections at the very heart of our activities.

The guiding principle of the monitoring, as set up by the Congress, is to have a country- by- country monitoring exercise, which is applied systematically in respect of all the 47 member States. 

This enables us to distance ourselves a little from the situation of local and regional democracy in individual States - and to embrace the wider picture of Europe. 

We can also identify recurring issues in the light of the European Charter of Local Self-Government and in respect of international electoral standards.

Recently, the Congress’ Secretariat has prepared an update of the previous analysis of these recurring issues that had been made for the period 2010-2013.

The new document covers the years 2014, 2015 and 2016. 

It identifies the main transversal problems that the Congress’ Rapporteurs observed in countries in which we organised missions to monitor the implementation of the Charter or to observe local and regional elections.

Among the provisions of the Charter that national authorities seem to have difficulties applying them in a satisfactory way, we find several “usual suspects” such as:

-           inadequate financial resources for local and regional authorities

-           the restricted definition of competences of authorities at grassroots’ level and allocation and exercise of local competences

-           and the lack of consultation with regard to the central government.

However, there is a new transversal problem which I consider as particularly worrying:  it concerns the absence of direct applicability of the European Charter of Local Self-Government in domestic legal systems.

It seems important to me to remind member States that ratifying a treaty means committing yourself to comply with its provisions.  This is the basis of international law and from this point of view the recurring issues exercise provided by the Congress is very relevant.

Together with the absence of direct applicability of the Charter, these issues reflect a real trend towards re-centralisation in member States. This should ring warning bells with an institution such as the Congress.

As far as local and regional elections are concerned, four transversal recurring issues have been identified during the observations carried out between 2014 and 2016:

-          the lack of accuracy and quality of voters’ lists

-          the misuse of administrative resources during electoral campaigns

-          the politicisation of the electoral administration at all levels

-          the lack of trust of voters in electoral processes.

The misuse of administrative resources during campaigns appears to be one of the most pressing problems with regard to elections conducted at all levels of government.

In order to respond to this problem, the Venice Commission adopted general Joint Guidelines earlier this year.

A new Congress Resolution, adopted at the Plenary Session in October, looks at this issue from the local and regional angle, addressing the specific role that local representatives and public officials have during electoral processes.

As a concrete follow-up to this Resolution, the Congress will prepare now a Checklist for compliance with international standards and best practices - and the elaboration of this practical document will be carried out in close co-operation with the Council for Democratic Elections of the Venice Commission.

I appreciate this opportunity.

The document on recurring issues as such will be sent to the Committee of Ministers where it should serve as an advance warning system with regard to developments in some member States which may include risks both to territorial self-government and international cooperation.

On a different note, I should like to inform you of the second part of the fact-finding visit to Turkey planned by the Congress in two weeks’ time.

I am one of the Rapporteurs and can provide further details under the respective item of the agenda.

As far as new Congress’ activities in the Mediterranean neighborhood are concerned, the political dialogue with Tunisia and Morocco has been intensified with the aim at granting the status of Partner for Local Democracy, but also to extend our co-operation in the field of citizen participation.

We have already received financing in form a voluntary contribution (from Norway) which will allow us to continue the work.

The Secretariat carried out two technical visits last month, and some more political visits are planned in 2017.

I am aware that you are also working with these countries and maybe there is room for co-operation also in this respect.

As regards the cooperation between our two institutions, I intend to pursue the work done by my two predecessors, Lars MOLIN and Philippe RECEVEUR.

In view of this meeting, I have studied the revised Statute of the Venice Commission and I note that Article 3 para 2 provides the possibility to your Commission to prepare Opinions at the request of the Committee of Ministers, the Parliamentary Assembly, and the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities.

I believe that this is a very interesting possibility and we should make use of it.

As Congress’ Rapporteur on local and regional democracy for several member States, I am well aware that -  in the framework of our discussions with Ministers – the Congress is often invited to prepare an Opinion on draft constitutional provisions on the chapters concerning  decentralisation or local self-government.

In my view, rather than taking an isolated approach, more co-operation between the Venice Commission and the Congress is desirable.

This is also the reason why I intend to propose to the members of my Monitoring Committee to regularly talk about co-operation with the Venice Commission.

This could take the concrete shape of a bi-annual exchange of views, if this seems also interesting to you. 

I am convinced that there are many ways to deepen our co-operation in the future and I look forward to this opportunity.

Thank you for your attention!