Congress of the Council of Europe Congress of the Council of Europe The Congress of Local and Regional Authorities (CLRA) is the pan-European political assembly representing local and regional authorities from the forty-seven member states of the Council 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. It 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
Council of Europe elected president of the first session of the its assembly. Spaak helped develop a network of intergovernmental contacts in many fields, such as human rights, local government, education, culture, sports, and youth policy. However, the organization only played an advisory role, and was not nearly strong enough to achieve Spaak's long-term goals of European unification. In 2018 an archive of all speeches made to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe by heads of state or government since the Council of Europe's creation in 1949 appeared online, the fruit of a two-year project entitled "Voices of Europe". At the