Strategic advocacy and political achievements

Looking back at this long experience, I can say that I contributed to important and long term impactful orientations on policy and through projects, positioning and advocacy work, jointly with ALDA and with other institutions I am part of.

Those are some of them :

  • Orientation on support to local democracy and decentralization, with my entire work and the participation in European institutions, projects and policy making, focusing on the role of local and regional authorities and the conditions for them to deliver solutions.
  • Support and creation of alliances of local and regional authorities, working with civil society and citizens, to support good local governance.
  • Support to local participatory democracy by elaborating policies, recommendations, took kits, training modules, assessments and actions. Some of them together with the Congress and with the ELOGE programme (see publications, projects, networking)
  • Contribution to strengthen the role of local authorities in the broader spectrum of activities to support sustainable and fair local development also through my contribution to Sustainable Development Goals’ elaboration and the localization of the SDGs, and the new Push for the Democracy of the European Commission’s plans. In this sense, I also took part in the consultation process and inputs of the essential 2013 Resolutions of the European Commission on the role of local authorities in Development. Contributed to inputs and recommendations in the new policies for development engaging local authorities and civil society, in particular in Neighborhood countries. I worked jointly with the key stakeholders like CEMR (Platforma) and other global organisations.
  • Support to city to city diplomacy by contributing with papers, articles and book and actions, thorough all my professional career, both a the EU and council and Congress level. I supported local and regional authorities being engaged in this process, mainly through the Local Democracy Agencies. See references in the Congress work.
  • Oriented the programme Europe for Citizens of the European Commission (Structured dialogue since its establishment) especially in the field of local authorities and civil society cooperation and twinning activities. Contributed to the elaboration of the CERV programme.
  • Support to local and regional authorities and decentralization in Eastern Europe and Northern Africa with programmes, research, recommendations to national and European institutions (see my projects and publications)
  • Orientation of the work of the Committee of the Regions and in particular ARLEM and CORLEAP with support in terms of civil society engagement at the local level, fiscal decentralization and public administration reform, often in cooperation with the Congress
  • Support to the mechanisms of Decentralized cooperation with documents programmes and advocacy work within the Congress at the European Commission and Committee of the Regions. (see my projects and my books). The programme of the Local Democracy Agencies is the key programme matching Decentralized cooperation and City to City Diplomacy (See MANAGEMENT)
  • Oriented the work of the Congress and the Council of Europe with several actions in terms of participatory democracy and citizens engagement at the local level :

    • Contributed to the drafting of the Code of Good Practice of civil participation in the decision making of the Conference of the INGOs and also the Congress. Trained and created numerous initiatives of dissemination
    • Engaged the members of the Congress in the activities of ALDA promoting citizens participation and good local governance, with projects and exchanges of best practices, as well as in the LDAs
    • Represented civil society engaged in good local governance by taking the floor in several high level events at the council of Europe
    • Contributed to the debates on the Valencia Declation that brought to the elaboration the ELOGE assessments
KEY ACHIEVEMENTS