The European Committee on Democracy and Governance (CDDG) is holding on 23 and 24 November its 18th and last meeting since its creation nine years ago.
Ambassador Svetlana Geleva, Chair of the Committee of Ministers’ Rapporteur Group on Democracy, Mathieu Mori, Secretary General of Congress and Claudia Luciani, Director of Human Dignity, Equality and Governance briefed participants about changes following the Fourth Council of Europe Summit. Svetlana Geleva commented on the imminent creation of the new Steering Committee on Democracy, whose terms of reference would enable it to build as necessary on the CDDG’s legacy whilst addressing important new summit priorities.
The meeting gave an opportunity to take stock of the work accomplished over those years, which included the preparation of six legal instruments and eight further policy guidance documents covering a variety of subjects such as principles of good democratic governance, civil participation in political decision-making, public ethics, the use of information and communication technologies in elections, as well as the democratic accountability of elected representatives and bodies.
This included also a rather unique set activities to promote best practices, existing standards, and experience sharing: the regular direct high level exchanges (with more than 30 members of government), the European Label of Governance excellence (ELoGE) currently run in 20 countries, the mechanisms of Peer Reviews and the Rapid Response Service to assist individual member States in their administrative and territorial reforms - in close coordination with the Centre of Expertise for Good Governance.
As most of these mechanisms will be transferred to the Congress, Mathieu Mory declared at the meeting “nothing will change” and these would be pursued.
The CDDG also discussed and adopted two new reports of particular importance in the current context: one on green public administration and ways to design climate-friendly and sustainable development policies, and one on multilevel governance dealing with ways to make best use of multi-actor co-governance models.
