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"Local and regional self-government with elected democratic institutions and a strong civil society are the basis of a pluralistic society, based on democracy, human rights and the rule of law. The Council of Europe and the European Union share these values and cooperate at different levels", Othmas Karas, First Vice-President of the European Parliament, and Andreas Kiefer, Secretary General of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe confirmed when meeting in Strasbourg on 17 February 2022.

Listening carefully to the citizens and giving them real ownership is always the best possible way of doing politics. The roots of European democracy are in our regions and municipalities. We stand ready to support democratic initiatives on regional and local level. They can provide very valuable input for our work in the European Parliament which is the directly elected Chamber of the people in the European Union. I am committed to position the European Parliament as the voice of the needs and concerns of the European citizens and I am happily looking forward to a fruitful cooperation, said Karas.

Andreas Kiefer welcomed the adoption of the European Parliaments Resolution on the annual report 2021 on human rights and democracy in the world and the European Unions policy on the matter, which "calls on the Commission to increase re-granting mechanisms within the EUs democracy support programmes in order to bolster bottom-up approaches to democracy support and ensure that smaller initiatives at a regional or local level can also benefit from EU support". This showed the profound understanding of the European Parliament for the support of grassroots democracy, to which the Congress contributes with EU-co-funded cooperation activities on the ground, currently in the South-Med IV programme and previously also in Council of Europe member States. The Secretary General of the Congress expressed hope that this EP-resolution would contribute to a stronger EU support for local and regional democracy initiatives in future programme cycles.

The cooperation between the EU and the Council of Europe takes place at different levels. The Congress mainly works with the Committee of the Regions. Like other Council of Europe monitoring bodies, the Congress provides input from its monitoring and election observation reports to the progress review reports of the Commission on candidate countries. Operationally the Congress implements projects with local and regional authorities and their elected leaders in the framework of Council of Europe Action Plans.

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Joint commitment to strengthen grassroots democracy and civil society: meeting of Othmar Karas and Andreas Kiefer in Strasbourg - Council of Europe