Despite some improvements in the work of municipalities, major concerns remain about a number of factors impairing the development of self-government in Azerbaijan, such as a lack of real powers of municipalities, of a status of state institutions and of own financial resources, says the monitoring report of the Council of Europe’s Congress of Local and Regional Authorities which also provides a number of urgent recommendations to the authorities.
The report prepared on the basis of remote visit carried out in February this year, welcomes some improvements in Azerbaijan such as the ratification of Article 10.3 of the Charter which provides the right to co-operate between municipalities and their counterparts in other States (such cooperation, however, would require a permission by the state authorities of Azerbaijan); the improvement of the quality and transparency of the work of municipalities; the use of the delegation of functions to municipalities for the first time in 2020, and the increased representation of women and young people in municipal councils after the last municipal elections in 2019.
However, municipalities in Azerbaijan are not considered state institutions and part of overall public administration, but rather an expression of civil society, and their powers are not full and exclusive, the report says.
