Congress President Leendert Verbeek intervened at the plenary of the European Committee on Democracy and Governance (CDDG), on 29 November 2021, highlighting the importance of regular dialogue to further develop mutual cooperation, based on complementarity between the Congress’ and CDDG’s priorities. The future CDDG’s focus on new forms of deliberative and participatory democracy should build on the Congress’ work in this field. In this context the President referred to the Congress report on the use of deliberative methods in municipalities and regions to be adopted in March 2022. Other future CDDG priority areas in which the Congress has been working include in particular multilevel governance, digitalisation and artificial intelligence, environment, crisis resilience and transfrontier cooperation.
President Verbeek recalled the Congress strong record of work on promoting public ethics and anti-corruption and its own reinforced ethical standards. He provided an update on the Congress monitoring and election observation activities. He further underlined the importance of respecting the European Charter of Local Self-Government during the ongoing sanitary crisis, preventing the risks of centralisation in the long run and ensuring enhanced citizens’ participation in local affairs. The Chair of the Congress Governance Committee Jelena Drenjanin is available for a future exchange of views with CDDG.
