The Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe elected on Tuesday the Belgian politician Marc Cools as its new President for a two-and-a-half-year term.
A local councillor in Uccle, Marc Cools, was previously a Brussels MP, councillor and briefly interim Mayor of Uccle in 2017. He also chaired the Group of Independents and Liberal Democrats in the Congress. Cools left his party, the French-speaking liberals MR, before the 2018 municipal elections to create a dissident list.
"We need to find new ways of directly involving citizens in deliberations and bringing them as close as possible to decision-making," said Cools in his opening speech.
Marc Cools. Credit: Belga
Cools also called for the funding and staffing of the Congress to be raised in order to fulfil its mission and the mandate given by the Reykjavik Summit.
The Congress of Local and Regional Authorities is a Council of Europe institution tasked with strengthening local and regional democracy in its 46 member states. It comprises 306 representatives and 306 substitutes, appointed for 5 years, representing more than 130,000 local and regional authorities in Europe.
