The Congress, having examined the proposal of the Chamber of Local Authorities,

1. Noting that the European Charter of Local Self-Government is the only international treaty designed to protect the rights of local authorities in Europe and that, to date, thirty-four Council of Europe member states have signed and ratified it, three member states have signed but not ratified it and four others have yet to sign it;²

2. Noting that the Charter has become established as a legal and political benchmark for the activities of the Council of Europe’s bodies in developing local democracy in the new central and eastern European member states and that, consequently, the Parliamentary Assembly has decided to make it one of the conditions for accession to the Council of Europe, so that all the member states should now be in a position to ratify it;

3. Considering that the Charter is also a valuable instrument for strengthening local democracy in the “older” democracies of western Europe that wish to adapt their domestic administrative system to the increasingly diverse needs of our societies, and, for these reasons, was acknowledged as a legal safeguard for local self-government by the European Union’s Committee of the Regions and Local Authorities in its opinion on the application of the principle of subsidiarity, adopted at its plenary meeting on 10 and 11 March 1999;

4. Recalling:

a. the agreement of the Committee of Ministers and the explanatory report on the Charter, on the basis of which the Congress has, since 1994, been responsible for political monitoring of the Charter’s implementation, through an ad hoc Congress working group assisted by a group of independent experts representing the signatory states (the working group carries out this duty by drawing up general reports on the implementation of different articles of the Charter (ex officio monitoring) and by examining direct complaints from local authorities alleging that their own state authorities have failed to comply with the Charter’s provisions (monitoring on request));

b. that the monitoring activities carried out by the working group since 1994 have led to the adoption of three resolutions and three recommendations³ concerning compliance with a large number of articles of the Charter and procedures for monitoring its application (these texts, addressed to the Committee of Ministers, were based on three separate monitoring reports and the preliminary version of a fourth report and were drawn up between 1994 and 1998 by the working group, assisted in each case by the group of independent experts);

c. that in order to validate these reports and to raise awareness of the Charter (following the conference held in Barcelona from 23 to 25 January 1992, which played a decisive part in the setting up of the current system for political monitoring by the Congress of the Charter’s implementation), the working group has held a number of specific international conferences, viz:

i. the conference celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Charter, organised jointly by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe and the Danish Interior Ministry and held in Copenhagen on 17 and 18 April 1996;

ii. the conference on the application of the European Charter of Local Self-Government by the courts, held in Barcelona from 24 to 26 April 1997;

5. Welcoming these activities, in particular the procedure followed for drawing up the first three reports on political monitoring of the implementation of the Charter, which has made it possible to establish and maintain frank, constructive dialogue with the authorities of the signatory states, by means of co-operation with the Committee of Ministers through the Council of Europe’s Steering Committee on Local and Regional Democracy (CDLR);

6. Welcoming the fact that the Congress’s work on political monitoring of the Charter’s implementation has been reinforced by the statutory reform which recently led to its restructuring, so that it has consolidated its role as the political guarantor of local self-government throughout Europe and of the application of the subsidiarity principle within the Council of Europe’s member states;

7. Further to the examination of the new report on political monitoring of the Charter, drawn up by the working group, on: The financial resources of local authorities in relation to their responsibilities: a litmus test for subsidiarity⁴, which represents the culmination of the fourth ex officio monitoring assignment and is also based on the conclusions of a further international conference held by the working group in Ancona (Italy) from 14 to 16 October 1999 on the theme: The Council of Europe Charters of Local and Regional Self-Government: Subsidiarity in Action. Responsibilities and Finances of Local and Regional Authorities.

8. Expresses its profound concern at the inadequate implementation of Article 9 of the Charter, concerning the financial resources of local authorities, and in particular:

a. at the trend towards fewer local authorities' "own" resources in a large number of Council of Europe member states;

b. that these authorities’ resources are in many cases not commensurate with the responsibilities assigned or delegated to them by other authorities;

9. Considers that ongoing negotiation on an equal footing must take place between local authority representatives and the relevant regional and/or national authorities in order to achieve stability in local financial resources and ensure that they are commensurate with the local authorities’ responsibilities and reflect cost trends;

10. Invites local authorities as well as their representative associations:

a. to pay close attention to the finances they are allocated to exercise the responsibilities assigned or delegated to them;

b. to demand the setting up of joint central/local authority committees to assess the balance between resources and responsibilities⁵;

c. if the decentralisation of new taxes is not feasible, to negotiate financial stability pacts with the central authorities to ensure that the level of local resources remains relatively stable;

d. to consider the optimum level of apportionment of responsibilities between the central and local authorities;

e. to make choices regarding the extent of the responsibilities which they are prepared to discharge (for example, in relation to their population);

f. to ensure that the resources transferred to them are open-ended (as is the case with taxes) or may be re-assessed;

g. on a more general level, to exercise caution in examining proposals presented to them regarding the transfer of responsibilities and to state their views when the transfer takes place;

11. Considers that:

a. the principle of subsidiarity also entails full devolution of administrative powers to the authorities that are closest to the citizen, and a large measure of flexibility in the assignment of such powers to large towns and cities, on the one hand, and to small towns, rural municipalities and intermediate-level authorities, on the other;

b. the application of this principle in governing relations between local authorities, regions, central or federal governments and, for the countries concerned, the European institutions, requires the national, regional and, where appropriate, European legislatures to refrain from excessive regulation in matters that fall within the remit of local or regional authorities, which must enjoy sufficient room for manoeuvre;

c. the equivalence between the financial resources and responsibilities of local authorities is a particularly significant testing ground for the implementation of the subsidiarity principle by central and regional as well as European authorities vis-à-vis local authorities;

12. Determined to continue its efforts to apply the principle of subsidiarity in relations between all tiers of government throughout Europe, as part of a coherent, harmonised European system of legal safeguards:

a. is willing to consolidate its function as the political guarantor of the principle of subsidiarity in relations between different levels of central or federal, regional and local government within individual states, on the basis of the European Charter of Local Self-Government;

b. wishes to hold an international conference for representatives of the national judicial authorities, in order to examine the legal conditions for implementing the provisions of the European Charter of Local Self-Government in ratifying countries;

13. Believes that safeguards for the principle of subsidiarity at all levels of government will be incomplete until the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe adopts the draft European Charter of Regional Self-Government (in this connection, the Congress points out that this draft convention is complementary to the European Charter of Local Self-Government and has already won the unanimous support of the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly, the Assembly of European Regions and the Council of European Municipalities and Regions);

14. Pays tribute to the efforts of the European Union’s Committee of the Regions and Local Authorities to become the guarantor within the EU institutions for the application of the principle of subsidiarity as enshrined in Article 5 of the Treaty on European Union (in this connection, the Congress stresses the need for the European Union to apply this principle, not only in its relations with its member states, but also with regard to regions and local authorities, in particular when adopting legal measures regulating matters within their sphere of competence);

15. Welcomes the fact that the Committee of the Regions and Local Authorities has intensified its efforts in pressing for a revision of the Treaty on European Union at the forthcoming intergovernmental conference on the Union, in order to extend the scope of the principle of subsidiarity to local and regional authorities, having regard to the principles set forth in the European Charter of Local Self-Government and, possibly in the near future, the European Charter of Regional Self-Government;

16. Considers that the systems that would then be in place, within the Council of Europe and the European Union respectively, would provide a European system of legal and political safeguards for local and regional self-government in the Europe of the new millennium; a dynamic, progressive new culture of subsidiarity could then take on the challenges of globalisation and European integration, while ensuring respect for human rights and meeting the requirements of democracy and diversity throughout Europe;

17. Recalls its support for the work carried out by the United Nations in drawing up a World Charter of Local Self-Government and confirms its readiness to continue paying close attention to the drafting of the charter.

APPENDIX

Member states of the Council of Europe:

Non-member States of the Council of Europe:

International Organisations :

Notes :

(a) Accession - (s) Signature subject to ratification - (su) Succession - (r) Signature "ad referendum". R.: Reservations - D.: Declarations - A.: Authorities - T.: Territorial Application - C.: Communication - O.: Objection.