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New President of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe elected

26 October 2010 16:55 (UTC +04:00)

Strasbourg. Fouad Gulubeyli â€“ APA. At the opening of the 19th Session of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe, on 26 October 2010, Keith Whitmore (United Kingdom, ILDG), President of the Congressâ€™ Institutional Committee and of its Independent and Liberal Democrat Group (ILDG), was elected President of the Congress. In the first round of the election, he obtained 157 votes (an absolute majority), and Ian Micallef (Malta, EPP/CD) 66 votes out of the 230 votes cast.

The 19th Session of the Congress opened on 26 October 2010 in Strasbourg will adopt political priorities for 2011-2012 as well as changes to its structures and working methods. The Congress will debate monitoring reports on the situation of local and regional democracy in Russia and local democracy in Estonia and Montenegro. There will be a discussion on the report on observation of local elections in Georgia on 30 May 2010. Amongst further Congress reports on the agenda of next weekâ€™s Plenary are: inter-faith and intercultural tensions at local level; cultural integration of Muslim women; integration of young people from disadvantaged areas; rights and responsibilities of territorial authorities in the fight against corruption; coastal towns tackling threats from the sea and landscape as a new dimension of public territorial action.
Among the personalities to address the session are Prime Minister of Andorra Jaume Bartumeu Cassany; Musa Xhaferri, Minister of Local Self-Government of the â€œformer Yugoslav Republic of Macedoniaâ€ chairing the Committee of Ministers; Council of Europe Secretary General ThorbjÃ¸rn Jagland and Parliamentary Assembly President MevlÃ¼t Ã‡avuÅŸoÄŸlu; Manuel Chaves Gonzalez, Third Vice-President of the Government and Minister for Territorial Policy (Spain); Mercedes Bresso, President of the EU Committee of the Regions; and Mayor of Tbilisi George Ugulava (Georgia).