The members of the Monitoring Committee of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe will meet in Athens on 16 February 2017. Georges Patoulis, President of the Central Union of Municipalities of Greece (KEDE), and Michalis Angelopoulos, Vice-President of the Congress, Mayor of the Island of Samos and Head of the Greek delegation to the Congress, will address the participants prior to the opening of the meeting by Leen Verbeek (Netherlands, SOC), Chair of the Monitoring Committee.
The meeting agenda includes several reports on the situation of local and regional democracy in Finland, Iceland, Estonia, and Malta and on the observation of elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The participants will discuss the outcome of the fact-finding mission which the Congress recently sent to Turkey to look into the detention of elected mayors and their replacement by persons appointed by the government in several municipalities.
The members of the Committee will also examine a report on the role of local authorities in dealing with migration with a view to its adoption at the plenary session of the Congress in March 2017. In September 2016 a delegation led by Jean-Claude Frécon, past-President of the Congress, visited several refugee camps in the Attica Region to examine the specific situation of Greek local and regional authorities.
