The Council of Europe is an international organisation founded in the wake of World War II to uphold human rights, democracy and the rule of law in Europe. Founded in 1949, it has 46 member states, with a population of approximately 675 million; it operates with an annual budget of approximately 500 million euros.
The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ECRML) is a European treaty adopted in 1992 under the auspices of the Council of Europe to protect and promote historical regional and minority languages in Europe. However, the charter does not provide any criterion or definition for an idiom to be a minority or a regional language, and the classification stays in the hands of the national state.
The European Union created a Committee of the Regions to represent Regions of Europe as the layer of EU government administration directly below the nation-state level. The committee has its headquarters in Brussels.
The European Committee of the Regions (CoR) is the European Union's (EU) assembly of local and regional representatives that provides sub-national authorities with a direct voice within the EU's institutional framework.
The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe or Committee of Ministers is the Council of Europe's decision-making body. It comprises the Foreign Affairs Ministers of all the member states, or their permanent diplomatic representatives in Strasbourg. It is both a governmental body, where national approaches to problems facing European society can be discussed on an equal footing, as well as a collective forum, where Europe-wide responses to such challenges are formulated. In collaboration with the Parliamentary Assembly, it is the guardian of the Council's fundamental values; it monitors member states' compliance with their undertakings.
In many parts of the world, local elections take place to select office-holders in local government, such as mayors and councillors. Elections to positions within a city or town are often known as "municipal elections". Their form and conduct vary widely across jurisdictions.
Multi-level governance is a term used to describe the way power is spread vertically between many levels of government and horizontally across multiple quasi-government and non-governmental organizations and actors. This situation develops because many countries have multiple levels of government including local, regional, state, national or federal, and many other organisations with interests in policy decisions and outcomes. International governance also operates based on multi-level governance principles. Multi-level governance can be distinguished from multi-level government which is when different levels of government share or transfer responsibility amongst each other. Whereas multi-level governance analyses the relationship of different state levels and interaction with different types of actors.'
The Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CEMR) is the largest organisation of local and regional governments in Europe. Its members are 60 national associations of towns, municipalities and regions from 41 countries that are part of the Council of Europe. Together these associations represent about 130,000 local and regional authorities.
Christopher Newbury is a British Conservative politician. He was a member of the Congress of the Council of Europe from 1998 to 2010 and since 2009 has been a member of the new Wiltshire Council, created that year.
The Congress of Local and Regional Authorities is the pan-European political assembly representing local and regional authorities from the forty-six member states of the Council of Europe. Its role is to promote local and regional democracy, improve local and regional governance and strengthen authorities' self-government, according to the principles laid down in the European Charter of Local Self-Government. It is made up of two chambers, the Chamber of Local Authorities and the Chamber of Regions and holds its plenary sessions twice a year at the Palace of Europe in Strasbourg, where its permanent Secretariat is located.
The European Charter of Local Self-Government was adopted under the auspices of the Congress of the Council of Europe and was opened for signature by the Council of Europe's member states on 15 October 1985. All Council of Europe member states are parties to the Charter. New member states of the Council of Europe are expected to ratify the Charter at the earliest opportunity.
In England, spatial planning is undertaken at the national level, through the National Planning Policy Framework. The London region is the only one to have a statutory London Plan. Most planning functions are exercised by local authorities, with neighbourhood planning also taking place in some areas.
Odd Arild Kvaløy is a Norwegian politician for the Centre Party. He is best known as the county mayor of Rogaland from 1991 to 1999, being Rogaland's first county mayor to win re-election.
The INGO Conference is the body representing civil society in the Council of Europe, a European organisation founded in 1949. The Council of Europe has 47 member states with some 800 million citizens and its seat is in Strasbourg, France. The current president is Anna Rurka.
The Chamber of Regions is one of the two Chambers of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe, the other being the Chamber of Local Authorities.
Klas Anders Knape is a Swedish conservative politician. He served as the President of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities (CLRAE) of the Council of Europe between November 6, 2018 and March 23, 2021. He is the president of the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SALAR), and also a councillor of the Karlstad Municipality.
The UCLG Committee on Social Inclusion, Participatory Democracy and Human Rights is one of the four Committees of the United Cities and Local Governments. As an autonomous network in the framework of UCLG, its stated goal is to bring together local authorities from across the world to exchange points of view and local initiatives on social inclusion, participatory democracy and human rights. Inheritor of the forums of local authorities (FAL) held in parallel to the first editions of the World Social Forum, the Committee has become a relevant stakeholder in global advocacy for human rights in the city and the Right to the City Throughout its history, the Committee been characterized by facilitating meetings and networking between progressive local authorities, with a special emphasis in the Latin American and European region. Headquartered in Barcelona, the Committee is composed by more than 100 local governments and various partner organizations.
Andreas Kiefer is an Austrian politician. Since 2010, he is Secretary General of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe, an institution representing local and regional authorities of the 47 member states of the Council of Europe.
The European Alliance of Cities and Regions for Roma Inclusion is an initiative from the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe. The Alliance currently gathers 130 Cities and Regional authorities from 29 countries.
Armenia has been a member of the Council of Europe, an international organization that focuses on strengthening democracy, human rights, and the rule of law across Europe, since 2001.
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