(626 words, 5 minutes)
Check against delivery
18th November 2023
Mr Chair of the Global Parliament of Mayors,
Madam Mayor of Skopje,
Excellencies,
Mayors, Ladies and gentlemen,
I am honoured to be with you and I would like to start by thanking our hosts for their warm welcome and wonderful evening yesterday.
I am very happy to be here because this is a very useful event which concludes, if you don’t mind me saying, a very good week.
There are few good news internationally these days so if you allow me, I would like to tell you why I believe this was a good week.
This week, I had a meeting with representatives of the Belarus democratic opposition most of whom are living in exile, outside Belarus. The various opposition parties are working together and organizing themselves to identify and train what they call a reserve, that is people who will, after the current regime will end, lead the country in many different fields. The Council of Europe helps the democratic opposition forces train these people. At the Congress we help to train them on local democracy and local government.
This is exciting in itself but listen to that : out of the 640 reserve members recruited so far, 40% have declared that their favourite topic, the area of work they would like to be trained on and focus after the fall of the regime is : local government because they say this is where they will have the most immediate but also most longstanding impact.
That made my day.
I also had another inspiring meeting this week with colleagues from the European Court of Human Rights. When I started in this position earlier this year, I asked the Court to do an analysis of their judgments over the last 2 years and to see what role local authorities played in these judgments. We discovered that hundreds of condemnations of Member States are due not to decisions taken by States but because of decisions taken by local authorities. We now work together with the Court and our department for the execution of judgments to make sure local leaders are trained on their duties when it comes to Human Rights and are active in promoting and protecting Human Rights.
These two examples are interesting I believe :
Because they show the extend of competences local and regional authorities have gained over the last 50 years. Even in a very much intergovernmental organization like the Council of Europe, there is no area of the institutions work where the Congress and local authorities are not involved in.
This is thanks to the advocacy work, of organisations like the Global Parliament of Mayors and all other local and regional organisations across the globe.
What is also exciting is the role of young people in all this.
If I take my examples again, for the Belarus opposition meetings, 50% of the people in the room this week attending our training where less than 30yo.
If I take the European Court of Human Rights, one of the most talked about cases in front of our judges at the moment is one introduced by a group of young people aged 11 to 24 who are taking 33 MS of the Council of Europe to the European Court of Human Rights for , they claim, not doing enough in combatting climate change. If they win their case, it could mean the recognition of the right to a healthy environment as a human right. A complete change of paradigm in how we approach climate change.
Young people are the drivers for change in our societies, in our cities and inside international organisations.
It is our responsibility to give them the space and power they deserve. The Congress of the Council of Europe embraces this change. For 10 years now, we are involving young people in our work. Each member-state delegation welcomes a youth delegate and I am please the youth delegate of North Macedonia is with us today. These youth delegates are actively trained and participate in our sessions, and we help them develop projects in their cities that promote civil, cultural, environmental, or social engagements. They also take part in some of our missions such as our election observations missions. The Congress is the first, and so far, the only pan-European political assembly to directly integrate youth delegates in its plenary sessions and statutory work and many of them go on becoming leaders themselves.
Now I started by saying that I had a good week. I know this did not make for a particularly cheerful speech, talking about climate change and non democratic regimes but it was a good week since it illustrated the theme of your conference : cities are more than ever empowered / engaged and caring and democracy and development will not be delivered without them nor the next generations.
And it was a good week because it showed that cities and the young generations are more ready than ever to take up these challenges.
Thank you very much.