10^th Meeting of the CLIP Network

23-24 May 2011, Frankfurt, Germany

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

Dear Ms Nagel,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Dear colleagues,

It is with great pride that I am speaking to you today as President of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe. I am particularly proud because the Congress was one of the founding fathers of your network dedicated to the integration of migrants in our local communities.

The Congress has been following closely the activities of CLIP ever since its launch in September 2006. Your invaluable input into local policy-making on the integration of migrants has inspired Congress reports, which translated your proposals into truly pan-European recommendations for both local authorities and national governments. We have both supported your action and used your experience, and your expertise, in improving the integration of migrants through local housing policies, promoting equality and diversity in municipal employment and delivery of services, and, most recently, meeting the challenge of inter-faith and intercultural tensions at local level. This latest Congress resolution, adopted in March this year, was based – much as the previous ones – on your findings and practical proposals.

I would like to stress that one particular feature of your network has always been the practicality of your approach. The measures you propose come from practical experiences in your communities, from your own innovation, which is why they are concrete, specific and implementable – and often not very complicated. One example that comes to mind is your proposal to ease linguistic requirements on certain types of jobs to allow for more diversified employment. It is simple, and it works.

We in the Congress are proud that the CLIP, a network we helped to launch, has today become a successful example of inter-municipal cooperation in Europe. With more than 30 participating cities, you are a genuine driving force behind local – and even regional and national – efforts for the integration of migrants in its many aspects.

At your meeting during these two days, you are looking in particular at the question of migrant entrepreneurship, which is a very important aspect of integration. While recognising that employment is an essential factor in the integration process, we stress the responsibility for hiring migrants and often tend to overlook the potential of migrant communities for self-employment, self-organisation and their own contribution to local economy. This is why we find that your emphasis on the “other side of the coin”, so to speak, is a very relevant addition to your multi-faceted approach. Let me just stress once again that the Congress will continue to support you in your search for solutions to the problems of migrants.

This approach is also in line with the new priorities of the Council of Europe, which highlight the need for action to defend the rights and dignity of vulnerable groups, such as migrants and minorities. In general, the issues of immigration and integration of migrants remain high on the European agenda. This was confirmed yet again by the Group of Eminent Persons, which was set up by the Secretary General of the Council of Europe to analyse the challenges for European democracy and propose orientations for future action. Their report, entitled “Living together: Combining diversity and freedom in 21st-century Europe”, has just been made public.

The Group has identified the rising intolerance, xenophobia and discrimination among the main threats to our living together, and stressed that towns and cities “bear the main responsibility for ensuring that culturally diverse societies are open societies, in which people belonging to different cultural groups […] can feel at home and make their own contribution”. It is important that the Eminent Persons have specifically included among its recommendations for action the issues of participation of foreigners in local life and politics, as well as of integration of migrants and people of recent migrant origin.

The Congress has contributed to the preparation of this report by providing a number of policy recommendations which I would like to share with you today. They reflect our vision for the further direction of our activities, and I am convinced that they are directly relevant also to the work of the CLIP network. It is heartening to see that the Group of Eminent Persons in its report and recommendations has shared this vision. I should add that we were pleased to refer specifically to the work of the CLIP network in our contribution to the Group’s report.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We are convinced that the our future action for local and regional democracy in Europe should rest on four pillars of increasing citizen participation, improving local integration, fostering better dialogue and relations between different community groups, and building truly pan-European local and regional cooperation across borders. The CLIP network is already making a valuable contribution to all of these four areas.

Citizen participation and integration in particular go hand in hand. In relation to migrants and foreign residents, we in the Congress continue to insist on the setting-up of representative consultative structures at local level – such as councils of foreign residents – and on the right to vote in local elections for non-EU foreign residents. Last October, the Congress co-organised a conference on integrating foreign residents into local public life, which called on local authorities to provide such participative structures, and on national governments to ratify the Council of Europe Convention on the participation of foreigners at local level, giving them the right to a local vote. As a result of this conference, the first national network of councils of foreign residents was launched in France in April this year, and we hope that this network will eventually acquire a European outreach.

As for the right to vote in local elections, 24 European countries today currently give this right to non-EU residents (with or without the right to be elected), some on the basis of their bilateral agreements with other countries.[1] Foreign residents’ groups themselves see the right to vote as a major requirement, second maybe only to their access to rights and legal protection. Local voting achieves several objectives: it shows recognition of foreign residents as equal citizens; it gives them a voice and a means of political expression; it gives them a feeling of participation and empowerment as they take part in decision-making and their vote counts; finally, it gives them a better opportunity to elect one of their own and to be represented on the local council. After all, they are part of the community fabric as local residents. In the long run, the right to a local vote also reduces frustration among foreign residents and thus tensions in the community, thus creating conditions for better relations and dialogue between different community groups.

In the Congress, we can attest that the number of local and regional initiatives for more participation and better integration is growing. For example, setting up youth assemblies and even children’s councils in municipalities and regions is becoming a more and more common practice, not least thanks to the Charter for youth participation, advocated by the Congress. Some municipalities raise awareness through Integration Days, for example in Austria. Others take measures to encourage women to run in local elections – these practices were included in a recent Congress recommendation for boosting women’s participation in local politics. 

It is clear that citizen participation must be integrated into all levels of governance, and must involve all residents without exception, for the benefit of both the majority and minority population. However, a special case of local integration today is the situation of Roma. The Congress is aware of numerous local and regional initiatives in this regard, and a number of existing municipal networks are paying greater attention to this problem.  The Congress is currently planning to bring these various activities together into a cooperation framework, allowing for the sharing of good practices and coordination of action. Our first step in this direction is to convene a Summit of Mayors on Roma, for representatives of municipalities and networks involved with the issue. This Summit will take place in Strasbourg on 22 September this year, and I would like to use this opportunity to invite those municipalities in the CLIP network that are interested to take part in this event.

In the area of intercultural relations, CLIP has already carried out major work, which was reflected in the Congress resolution and recommendations on meeting the challenges of interfaith and intercultural tensions at local level, adopted last March. However, we feel that some proposals mentioned in our report will need further development: for example, the idea of promoting city identity as a unifying factor and city identity-building as a means of bringing cultural groups together. This is an idea worth examining, because many young people, especially those of a migrant background, identify first and foremost with the city they live in, rather than the region or nation as a whole.

Last but not least, our experience – which is also your experience as a network – shows that networking at local and regional level is a particularly practical way of sharing experience on what works on the ground, pulling together resources and implementing specific proposals. Today, we are witnessing a growing practice of European municipalities joining into networks to address specific issues of community development – something that should be encouraged. In addition to the CLIP network, I could mention Intercultural Cities focusing on intercultural local policies; Cities for Children that offer good practices in building a child-friendly urban environment; Energy Cities that deal with the use of green technologies in building construction and energy provision; Cities for Human Rights that look at ways to improve conditions for the exercise of and access to human rights at local level, to name but a few.

We are therefore convinced of the need to strengthen the framework for inter-municipal and inter-regional cooperation, allowing in particular for cooperation between EU and non-EU municipalities and regions. The initial framework for cross-border cooperation, based on the 1980 Madrid convention for transfrontier cooperation and its protocols, is already in place and should be developed further, in the spirit of European integration. I should add that in its recommendations, the Group of Eminent Persons specifically called on all member states to strengthen the framework for inter-municipal and inter-regional co-operation.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

These are, in broad strokes, the main axes of future action needed to take up today’s challenges for European democracy. All these measures for citizen participation, integration and pan-European local and regional cooperation would be necessary steps for managing European cultural diversity, which is a required condition for living together in the 21^st century Europe. Local and regional authorities have a key role to play in this process, and inter-municipal networks such as CLIP represent their will and commitment to work towards this objective. CLIP has much to contribute to this work, and I wish you every success in your future endeavours, in identifying new areas for innovation and finding solutions to integration problems in our local communities.

For its part, the Congress will continue to provide its support for your work.

Thank you.