In his communication to the Committee of Ministers on 23 October 2024, Congress Secretary General Mathieu Mori presented the highlights of the Congress’ 47th session, focusing on support to Ukraine, action to strengthen local and regional democracy and human rights protection, as well as recommendations in the fields of social rights, the environment and youth engagement.
The Secretary General pointed out that the Declaration adopted by the Congress at the session stressed the systematic character of destruction of Ukraine’s cultural heritage as a policy of erasing that country’s historical and cultural identity, and highlighted the importance of using the Council of Europe’s Faro and Nicosia conventions on the protection of cultural heritage as well as the Register of Damage for Ukraine to deal with claims linked to historic, cultural and religious heritage. In this regard, the Congress had also contributed to the Conference of Participants of the register, with its commitment to help prepare Ukrainian local and regional authorities for the submission of claims; the work on decentralisation in Ukraine was also pursued following the high-level dialogue on good democratic governance in July 2024.
Secretary General Mori took stock of the Congress monitoring, post-monitoring and election observation activities, aimed at strengthening local self-government and promoting multi-level governance and democratic participation, as well as co-operation programmes to assist member States in those areas. He referred in particular to discussions with Ireland and Türkiye of possible roadmaps to help implement Congress recommendations, and to ongoing projects in Armenia, Hungary, Finland and Serbia to address some findings of monitoring reports. He also pointed to the projects to promote citizens participation and participatory democracy in Bosnia and Herzegovina and all Balkan countries as well as in Georgia, where close dialogue was pursued with the authorities, civil society and the opposition.
The key findings from Congress monitoring and election observation over the past five years were also debated at the session as part of the early warning mechanism to detect threats to democracy – such as the rise in hate speech and disinformation, foreign influence in electoral processes, as well as physical and verbal aggression targeting local leaders. At the same time, the Secretary General underlined that Congress action to strengthen human rights protection at local level and ensure implementation of the Human Rights Court’s judgments by local authorities was gaining momentum, referring to a pilot activity in Bulgaria.
The Secretary General concluded by drawing attention to the Congress recommendations on long-term care for the elderly in local communities and on fostering circular economy at local level, celebration of the 10th anniversary of the participation of youth delegates in the Congress work, and a debate on the importance of promoting the principles of the European Charter of Local Self-Government beyond Europe.
