The Secretary General of the Congress, Andreas Kiefer, and members of the Congress Secretariat held a video conference with the Secretaries of the national delegations on 30 April 2020. 

Andreas Kiefer presented the functioning and activities of the Congress in the context of the crisis of COVID-19 following the decisions taken by the Bureau. They mentioned, in particular, the reorganisation of the monitoring missions of the European Charter of Local Self-Government and the issue of local and regional elections in the countries concerned.

The Delegation Secretaries presented an overview of the initiatives undertaken by their national authorities and by local and regional authorities to address the health crisis. They emphasised the strong concerns about the human, but also social and economic cost of this unprecedented crisis. The experiences carried out by local and regional authorities will be shared on the COVID-19 platform available on the Congress website, which also includes the actions of partners.

The exchanges were fruitful and emphasized the need to return, as soon as possible, to a normal situation in order to preserve democracy, human rights and the rule of law. In addition, the participants stressed the importance of the role of national associations and Congress members, who must be involved in dialogue with governments, as local and regional elected representatives, in order to ensure that national policies are genuinely effective as close as possible to the citizens. Furthermore, the current crisis which has led to the closure of borders highlights the need to examine the possibilities of maintaining co-operation at transfrontier level in times of crisis.

Source: https://www.coe.int/en/web/congress/-/video-conference-with-the-secretaries-of-delegation-of-the-congress