European week for local democracy - Council of Europe’s initiative

There are different types of support, national governments can provide for strengthening local democracy. The Council of Europe’s Congress of Local and Regional Development Authorities has decided, to start a programme, which is based on the member countries effort to utilize local democratic events during an action week - taking place in October.

“ELDW is a new annual European event where national and local events are organized concurrently by participating local authorities in all member States in order to foster the knowledge of local democracy and promote the idea of democratic participation at a local level.”

The resons for organizing local events are quite clearly stated on the supporting website, which is offering the basic information and supporting materials in various languages. However, for direct inquiries, they offer translation as well of the marketing materials (posters, logo etc).

The sad thing is that participating in this event is not obligatory for local governments, municipalities. They have the freedom to run any type of event or not - but the website is offering various great examples on possible activities on the how to “open the door” for citizens.  According to project dissemination, as the decision to run an event is in the hands of local authorities, the promotion is in the hand of correspondants - which creates an atmosphere of local diversity.

Beside the official programme of “pilot cities” - Madrid, Varna, Odessa, Brussels Capital region -  Ukraine, England and Wales are offering the widest rage of local participatory programmes.

Would it be a good idea to support the COE by the community of PEP-NET to develop e- programmes for the next year? Or maybe to run a brainstorming session for  this year?

Please comment!