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Council of Europe Report 2008
The Council of Europe is a much smaller organization than the EU, dealing with three ‘core issues’, human rights, democracy and the rule of law. Forty- seven countries, including all the former Soviet republics, send members to meetings of a Parliamentary Assembly, a Committee of Ministers, and a Congress of Local and Regional Authorities, mostly in Strasbourg. The Congress deals with conventions and standards on local and regional government. I serve as the Independent Group’s representative on the Congress, with Councillor Pauline Dee as substitute. We attend committee meetings and an annual three-day Plenary and also travel on other missions. Much of the work of the Congress is in producing monitoring reports on the situation of local (and, where it exists, regional) democracy in member states, observing elections to make sure they are free and fair, and promoting new charters and conventions which will help to raise standards.
During the past two years, there has been a growth in the number of ad hoc missions to deal with complaints that something has gone seriously wrong in a member state. These complaints come either directly from local governments or else from their national associations. Typical subjects are the undermining of local taxation and the dismissal or suspension of elected members for political reasons. The traditional monitoring process can be long, all-embracing and cumbersome, but a mission focussed on a narrow issue can act and report quickly. The Congress has no powers to intervene, but with the Council of Europe’s authority it can put pressure on governments, especially when they are found to be acting in breach of the European Charter of Local Self- Government (‘the European Charter’), an international guarantee of local authorities’ rights which most member states, including the UK, are parties to. There is now a draft European
Charter of Regional Democracy, which is broadly opposed by several governments but actively promoted by members from long- established regions, such as the German Länder and the Belgian provinces. A past attempt to create such a charter failed, so the outlook for this one is doubtful. We had a good debate on the draft at this year’s Plenary (26 to 29 May 2008, Strasbourg), and I joined others in proposing amendments to make it less restrictive. Pauline Dee is an active substitute member of the Congress. She also attended the 2008 Plenary, to present a Social Cohesion Committee report, ‘Responsible consumption and solidarity-based finance’. Meanwhile, I act as the Congress’s rapporteur for the revision of the European Charter, which takes me to meetings of the Group of Independent Experts on the Charter and to the inter- governmental CDLR. There, one of the most active members is our own DCLG’s Paul Rowsell. The planned revision of
the European Charter seeks to open it up to ratification by non-European countries (and by the EU) and to add safeguards in new areas, such as the protection of elected members from being dismissed or suspended for trivial reasons, and to improve others, such as the strengthening of local finances. During the past year, I have also represented the Congress at meetings of the European Commission for Democracy through Law (‘the Venice Commission’) and the Council for Democratic Elections, and at the UN- Habitat’s AGRED, a group which has successfully promoted world-wide guidelines on standards of local democracy based on our own European Charter. These were recently agreed by the UN’s General Assembly. A new puzzle which we have just debated at AGRED (in Oslo on 10 and 11 June) is about how to monitor compliance with these guidelines. They are advisory and not compulsory, but they may not be very effective without
someone to check up on progress. This is a small space to report on the activities of the Congress. For those interested in finding out more, you are very welcome to email me at christophernewbury@googlemail.com. The LGA’s European and International unit is promoting web-based reporting back, which should soon be in place to give you more details of the international dimension of local government. Christopher Newbury (Wiltshire CC & West Wiltshire DC) 19 June 2008
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