Speech by Martin Fodor, Member of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe
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Mr Chairman,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Dear colleagues,
It is a great pleasure for me to participate in this conference on the subject of citizen participation – which is the foundation of the participatory democracy model that has been debated in Europe over quite some time.
Indeed, participation of citizens in formulating policy decisions that directly affect their lives and the future of their communities can be considered a requirement of effective modern democracy, and this participation should not be limited to elections alone. If we only get a vote once every few years, and have no other input to decision making then life would be very frustrating for both voters and their representatives. It’s the daily mailbox of input from residents that shows me how my neighbourhood is thinking on many issues, even when I disagree with some of them. After all I am their representative; I need to know what is being thought about.
I would like to thank the organisers for the opportunity to present the perspective of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe – an assembly of elected politicians representing the communities of 47 European countries, including Armenia.
From the Congress perspective, the local level, the grassroots, where public authorities are the closest to citizens, where governing processes take place nearest to the residents they concern – this level is best placed for creating innovative mechanisms and platforms for citizen engagement.
The European Charter of Local Self-Government, this main treaty of reference for local democracy, defines, in its Preamble, the right of citizens to participate in local affairs as an absolute and undisputable principle. So why is that?
First, participation is crucial to help sustain the legitimacy of decisions and deliver accountability.
A second key argument is that public authorities need to listen and learn in order to design better policies and services.
Finally, participation gives a sense of belonging and makes local communities places where people want to live and work, now and in the future - I regularly hear how local people want to shape decisions, from how parks are managed, to where the city Arena should be built (an extremely controversial topic in my city just now).
In fact, the establishment of an individual right to participate in the affairs of a local authority reflects a long-term development of society in European countries. All countries, in different ways and to differing degrees, have come to recognise the fundamental importance of citizens being engaged and involved in public life. Today, democratic institutions cannot be sustained without taking on board the fundamental role and place of citizen participation. And this involvement can be done either well, or badly, in my experience.
A stark reminder of this is the current crisis of faith in democratic institutions, fuelled by the feeling of exclusion among our citizens. We are witnessing this crisis in people’s disillusionment with mainstream politics and in low voter turnouts in elections at all levels, but especially at local level – as little as 11% of voters in one ward of my city recently. This is alarming and affects all countries and all categories of the population. It is only through greater involvement of citizens in democratic governance on a daily basis that we can renew and re-energise their engagement in their communities, re-ignite their interest, and bring them back to the polling stations. It is only through participation that we can make democracy vibrant again and as a Green politician I am committed to this being more representative.
So in October 2007, the Ministers responsible for local and regional government of the Council of Europe member States, at their conference in Valencia, Spain, declared that the European culture of democratic participation of citizens in local public life constitutes an essential feature in our common understanding of, and in our commitment to, 21st century democracy, and that it deserves to be enshrined in a pan-European convention.
This convention took the form of the Additional Protocol to the European Charter of Local Self-Government, which was opened for signature at their next Ministerial Conference, in Utrecht, Netherlands, in November 2009. It entered into force on 1 June 2012.
The Protocol guarantees the right to participate in the affairs of a local authority, and mandates implementing measures to ensure the exercise of this right. It defines the right to participate in the affairs of a local authority as the right to seek to determine or to influence the exercise of a local authority's powers and responsibilities. According to the Protocol, the domestic law shall provide means of facilitating the exercise of this right at local level, including particular measures for different circumstances or categories of persons – such as, for example, women, young people, people with disabilities, minorities or foreign residents – without unfairly discriminating against any person or group. In my city, for example, we have a Women’s Forum and Youth Councillors and Youth Mayors who speak at our Full Council periodically. Their agenda and their passion for involvement and change is inspiring.
To date, the Protocol has 18 ratifications, including that of Armenia in 2013; five more States signed but not yet ratified it. Citizen participation became part of the Congress monitoring of local and regional democracy in European countries.
I should add that the importance of citizen participation at local level continues to be recognised by Council of Europe national governments, as reflected in a number of Committee of Ministers recommendations: most recently, the Guidelines for civil participation in political decision making, adopted in 2017, and this year’s recommendation on the participation of citizens in local public life. In this latest recommendation, the governments stressed in particular the need for promoting dialogue between citizens and local elected representatives.
I mentioned earlier how this can be done well or badly, and feel the need to mention examples of consultations where rather than asking for views, people were simply asked to choose which list of libraries should be closed in the city, list A, B or C, because of budget cuts imposed by the government. There was such an outcry and so many responses fed back with comments in a tiny text box of the form, starting with “None of the Above” that the closures were postponed by the Mayor for 2 years, until the next election. A better example is where our elected Mayor visits each neighborhood once in a while, for tea and a chat. There is a record kept of points raised by citizens and as a local councillor I have asked for the list of responses to questions that were raised.
Such a dialogue, however, would require specific mechanisms of interaction between community residents and their authorities. So, while the Additional Protocol and Committee of Ministers recommendations represent a legal framework for citizen participation, the next step today is to create concrete platforms of joint action and channels of constant information and communication between citizens and their mayors and councillors.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is very encouraging to hear that Armenia took important steps in creating a legal framework for citizen participation at local level, after ratifying the Charter of Local Self-Government in 2001 and its Additional Protocol in 2013. The Constitution of Armenia grants citizens the right to directly participate in the administration of their community and in solving community problems through local referendum. Provisions for the participation of community residents in their local self-government are also included in the Law on Local Self-Government.
But this legal framework will remain a dead letter without the practice of citizen participation – practice that must be introduced and promoted by local authorities yourselves. In 2011, the Congress report on “Citizen participation at local and regional level in Europe” found that national legal frameworks often provide only broad principles recognising the possibility or the basic forms of citizen participation. Regional and local authorities, on the other hand, are granted quite general powers to lay down detailed rules and mechanisms.
Accordingly, in its Resolution 326 (2011) based on this report, the Congress called on local and regional authorities to make greater use of “informal” and “alternative” forms of participation – such as citizen panels and citizen initiatives – and to use new information and communication technologies for electronic governance in setting up a general framework for e-participation and provision of e-services. The Congress also called for encouraging mobilisation of citizen groups and associations and for the development of community centres and other facilities where direct citizen participation can be tested.
Various forms of direct participation are increasingly practiced at local level – such as the local referendum, citizen initiatives and petitions, people’s assemblies and townhall meetings with citizens, public debates and hearings, consultations with citizen panels, but also the form of various participative structures such as citizens councils, youth assemblies, councils of migrants and foreign residents, that act as consultative bodies to local councils.
Another innovative idea is participatory budgeting, whereby local budgets are agreed with the participation of local residents. Over the years, participatory budgeting has been gaining ground in Europe. In Portugal, for example, it has become a common and even mandatory practice – and at least one city, Valongo, is also paying particular attention to engaging young people in deciding the financing of local youth activities, in what they call “youth budgeting”. Something similar was also tried by colleagues of mine in the town of Brighton and Hove to let young people allocate the youth budget themselves. In my neighbourhood we also had a local small grants budget which was allocated by community representatives from bids made for grants, and just officially signed off by the elected councillors as a matter for formality.
Regarding young people, the European Charter on youth participation at local and regional level, adopted in 1992 and revised in 2003, suggests lines of action to engage young people in democratic processes at the grassroots. The practice of establishing youth councils as consultative bodies at local level has become widespread across Europe – in France alone, for example, there are more than 2,500 youth and children’s councils, according to the National Association of Youth and Children’s Councils, ANACEJ, which groups 400 of them.
Another category are foreign residents, and here the guidance comes from the 1992 Council of Europe Convention on the Participation of Foreigners in Public Life at Local Level. This Convention provides for the right to vote and to stand in local elections for everyone who has lived in a given community for five years or more; today, more than 20 European countries in practice effectively grant foreigners the right to a local vote, and several countries the right to stand in local elections. Many municipalities have also set up consultative councils of foreign residents.
One of the successful initiatives of the Congress testing various participation schemes at the grassroots level is the European Local Democracy Week, which has become a truly pan-European annual event since its first launch in 2007. The Week serves to foster dialogue between community residents and public authorities, by bringing them together in joint activities to hear each other’s concerns, decide on priorities for the community, and improve the functioning of local government. Last year for this week I took part in 3 events: a question and answer sessions with our own council staff, to hear their perspective on how the council operates; an open evening to discuss voting for the public in our council chamber; and a young peoples’ assembly from schools across my city in our City Hall, where the young people decided what priorities they have for the future, such as higher education spending, or better support for mental health. We often hear about voter apathy, but their interest in political action was inspiring.
Armenian municipalities took part in 2014 and 2015 editions of the Local Democracy Week, and we hope to see them join this initiative again in the future.
In its past projects in Armenia, the Congress supported local initiatives on citizen participation in four communities – Akhtala [AKH-ta-la], Artik [AR-tik], Urtsadzor [ur-tsa-DZOR] and Vardenik [var-DEH-nik]. The objective was to foster a culture of engaging local residents and civil society in discussions on community development priorities, infrastructural projects and budget planning, and to create a space for ‘learning by doing’, in particular by promoting a practice of regular community meetings. These meetings allowed for establishing direct dialogue between local authorities and residents – through, for example, a permanent public council, such as in Artik.
Another Congress project supported local initiatives aimed at more transparent and ethical governance, through better citizen engagement, in the communities of Aygepat, Karmir Aghek and Tashir.
We will hear from some of these communities today. The results of these two projects are reflected in the Toolkit for local authorities ‘Towards a greater citizen participation in community decision-making’, as well as in the Handbook on transparency and citizen participation in Armenia and the Tool Guide for local authorities on change management.
We hope that citizen participation mechanisms will continue to be successfully built in communities across Armenia, and I look forward with great interest to our discussions today.
Thank you.