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Council of Europe Report 2007
The Council of Europe should not be confused with the EU. It is much smaller and deals with the ‘core issues’ of human rights, democracy and the rule of law. Forty-six countries are members and send delegations to the Congress and the Parliamentary Assembly, in Strasbourg. The Congress deals with standards and conventions of local and regional government across Europe. I serve as the Independent Group’s representative, with Councillor Pauline Dee as substitute. The work is mostly in going to meetings and travelling on other Congress missions. Work in hand: During the past year, since June 2006, I have served as the Congress’s ‘rapporteur’ on democracy at the local level in Liechtenstein, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Serbia. The last of these is a new member state, thanks to the break up of the union of Serbia and Montenegro, all that was left of the former Yugoslavia. I am also the Congress’s rapporteur on the revision
of the European Charter of Local Self- Government, a guarantee of local authorities’ rights which almost all member states (including the UK) have ratified. My first report on this was considered by the Congress’s Institutional Committee in April 2007, and in connection with that I have attended meetings in Strasbourg and Paris with the Group of Independent Experts on the European Charter. One of the areas I am aiming to improve in this exercise is to add a new guarantee for elected members against suspension or disqualification which is arbitrary or based on trivial, non-criminal matters. The work on the Liechtenstein report was finished at this year’s Congress Plenary, held in Strasbourg at the end of May 2007. In a debate there with Liechtenstein’s local government minister, he stated that all recommendations for change were to be accepted. These are mostly in the areas of planning, social services and
funding. Work is also now finished on the Bosnia & Herzegovina report, prepared jointly with Karsten Behr of Lower Saxony. Our second monitoring visit to Bosnia took place between 1 and 5 July 2006, during last year’s LGA conference. We presented our reports to the Congress at a meeting in Moscow on 14 November 2006, highlighting some serious problems with local and ‘regional’ (canton-based) democracy. A debate with representatives of the country on our recommendations has been delayed – one of the greatest problems with B&H is that its national government ratified the European Charter but lacks the practical power to make sure that the cantons and the Republica Srpska (an entity within the country) respect it. Work is at an early stage on a new Serbia report, which will be a challenge. My first monitoring trip there is planned for the second quarter of 2008. I know the country a little already, as I have observed some
elections there. I try to keep this annual report to just one page, but if anyone is interested in anything here, or in the wider work of the Congress, please do feel free to email me at christophernewbury@googlemail.com Christopher Newbury (Wiltshire CC and West Wiltshire DC)
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