Congress of Local and Regional Authorities
international organization
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. Known from 1957 to 1983 as the Conference of Local Authorities of Europe and from 1983 to 1994 as the Standing Conference of Local and Regional Authorities 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.
The Congress 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 based.
The two Chambers have a total of 612 members, who each must hold an elective office (they may be regional or municipal councillors, mayors or presidents of regional authorities) and who represent over 130,000 authorities in the different states. It encourages the devolution and regionalization processes, as well as the trans-frontier co-operation between cities and regions. The Congress conducts regular monitoring visits to all member states to appraise their implementation of the European Charter of Local Self-Government, observes the functioning of local and regional elections in its member states, and creates international treaties that lay down common European standards to protect local authorities' rights.
History
The present Congress of Local and Regional Authorities was established on 14 January 1994 with the Statutory Resolution 94(3) of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe. However, the history of the Congress reflects the already fifty-year history of the development of local and regional democracy in Europe.
The Congress's predecessor, the Conference of Local Authorities of Europe was first established at the Council of Europe in 1957. It held its first session on 12 January 1957 in Strasbourg presided by the prominent French statesman Jacques Chaban-Delmas, who was President of the Conference from January 1957 to January 1960.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Congress of Local and Regional Authorities” is international organization. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Congress, Local and Regional, not as a finished interpretation.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1251615. VIAF identifies the subject as 159710444. The Library of Congress control number is nr95015384. 3 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1957, 1983, 1994 and 1960.
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This entry incorporates text from “Congress of Local and Regional Authorities” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.