Promotion of Good Democratic Governance is among the Priorities of the Latvian Presidency of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe (17 May–15 November 2023) (CM/Inf(2023)10).
The Council of Europe’s Centre of Expertise for Good Governance (CEGG) is supporting Latvian authorities in delivering good democratic governance. To this end, in cooperation with a leading Latvian think tank Providus, the CEGG has been helping to implement the project on the European Label of Governance Excellence (ELoGE), which includes evaluations of the participating municipalities against a national benchmark on good governance, hence providing them with a remarkable learning and improvement opportunity. The local authorities that have demonstrated compliance with the 12 Principles of Good Democratic Governance will be awarded the Label at a final ELoGE ceremony.
Against this background, the Latvian Ministry of Environmental Protection and Regional Development in cooperation with the Centre of Expertise and Providus, organised an International Conference on Good Governance at the local level, held on 26 May 2023 in Riga. The Conference was organised under the auspices of the Latvian Presidency with the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers and gathered around 100 participants – stakeholders in the local governance apparatus in Latvia, such as the Ministry, local authorities, the Ombudsperson, State Audit Office, other state institutions, NGOs, as well as representatives of foreign authorities responsible for local governance policies. The Conference included three panel discussions with Council of Europe experts, touching upon some of the most pertinent challenges for local democracy in Latvia, such as the issue of supervision of local authorities and strategic municipal planning. The final part of the Conference was dedicated to the results of the implementation of ELoGE in Latvia, where Minister Māris Sprindžuks awarded the Label in the form of a crystal dodecahedron to 5 municipalities. The takeaways from the Conference included commitment to invest more in good democratic local governance, including through exchange of good European practice.
Preceding the Conference, on 25 May 2023, the Centre of Expertise in cooperation with Providus held a Roundtable discussion on national ELoGE practices where Latvian practitioners were joined by peers from Lithuania, Finland, Poland, Slovakia, Romania, North Macedonia, Estonia, and Norway. The participants exchanged the lessons learnt from their respective ELoGE programmes and commented on possibilities for improving the tool. Other countries interested in implementing ELoGE had an opportunity to learn more about this tool. In addition to the peer discussion, representatives of the line ministries of several countries expressed their interest to reinforce cooperation with the support of the Centre of Expertise.
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