The Secretary General of the Congress, Andreas Kiefer, presented on 2 May 2019 the contribution of the Congress to the ministerial meeting to take place in Helsinki on 16-17 May 2019 to the Ministers’ Deputies. This text adopted during the 36th Congress session contributes to the reflection currently being conducted on the future of the Council of Europe. Mr. Kiefer stressed that this contribution was an analysis of the current democratic crisis in Europe and the commitment of local and regional authorities to support national governments to reconnect with citizens and to restore confidence in democratic processes and institutions. : “All level of governance are concerned when it comes to restoring confidence in democratic processes and institutions”, he underlined.
The Committee of Ministers was also informed about the budgetary requirements of the Congress for 2020/2021 and several delegations expressed their support for an increase in the budget of the Congress to enable the third political assembly of the Council of Europe to perform its missions.
Mr. Kiefer gave an overview of the Congress activities and focused on the recent sessions of the Congress (35th session on 6-8 November 2018 and 36th session on 2-4 April 2019) and the latest activities in the field of monitoring of local and regional democracy and the observation of local elections - Turkey in March and Albania in June 2019.
The bi-annual communications of the Secretary General to the Committee of Ministers are accompanied by the publication of an activity report summarising the work of the Congress during the preceding six months (mid-October 2018 to mid-April 2019 in this case) with key reference documents in an annex.
The Congress' contribution to the reflection on the future of the Council of Europe was adopted on 2 April 2019 during the 36th Session of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities.
- The Congress' contribution to the reflection on the future of the Council of Europe: Report CG36(2019)08
