The CALRE is the conference of chairmen of the legislative federal state parliaments of Europe. The chairmen who are Calre-members are not at the head of the national parliaments of their respective countries, but lead of the parliament of a sector or region. Membership of the Calre is limited to regions from the European Union. The extent to which the twelve member states of the Union have attributed autonomy to their sectors, differs from country to country. Certain countries, such as France and Holland are unitary states, meaning that only the central government has legislative power. Countries such as Germany and Belgium on the other hand are federations, meaning that the federal states have wide legislative power. In other countries, e.g. the United Kingdom and Portugal, certain sectors do have a parliament of their own, but the rest of the country has to acknowledge national laws.
Composition
The CALRE unites the regional parliaments of the European Union that have legislative power. In total there are 74 regions from 8 countries. Together these regions represent more than 200 million inhabitants. More specifically, the Calre consists of the parliaments of the
Spanish autonomous communities; the
Italian regional councils; the assemblies of the
Belgian regions and communities; the parliaments of both the
Austrian and the
German Länder; the autonomous parliament of Åland (
Finland); the regional assemblies of the Azores and Madeira (
Portugal); and the ones of Scotland, Wales and Northern-Ireland (
the United Kingdom).
How different their powers may be, it always concerns regional parliaments that have two things in common: they are part of the EU and they have legislative power. These characteristics give the CALRE a kind of homogeneity that is crucial for determining the common aims. Because of their legislative power, these regions all have to convert European rules to their own rules.
Organisation
On the one hand the CALRE consists of a
Plenary Meeting, composed of the chairmen of all the parliaments that belong to the conference, on the other hand it consists of a
Standing Committee with eight chairmen of regional parliaments: one per country of which one or more regions are represented in the CALRE. Chairmanship of the CALRE (also the Standing Committee and the Plenary Meeting) is filled every year by another country. At the moment it is filled by the chairman of the Flemish Parliament.
On 29 and 30 October 2001 the Plenary Meeting at the fifth CALRE-conference in Funchal (Madeira, Portugal) approved the CALRE-regulation, that regulates practical organisation.
Aims
The feeling that regional parliamentary regulations do not come into their own in the European unification, form the base of the creation of the CALRE. The CALRE sees the European Union as a challenge concerning institutional integration, where the regional legislative assemblies do not want to be forced to only watch from the side line. Finally they also represent a lot of civilians from the European Union. The regional parliaments do not only express a political vision but also a cultural identity, and they are placed ideally to protect that cultural individuality in the process of globalisation and unification.
The aims as they were formulated by the then CALRE-chairman Ovidio Sánchez Díaz in 1998 can be summarised as follows:
1) As the democratic control on European government begins with the regions, it must be prevented that a democratic deficit affects these regions. Also the subsidiarity principle has to be protected.
2) The CALRE has to be a stimulus in the organisation of parliamentary control on European Affairs, among others via competent committees in each department.
3) There is a need for information-exchange, on the one hand between the CALRE-members and on the other hand between the national parliaments and the European Parliament.
4) The CALRE has to be able to function as the voice of regional parliamentarism in Europe
.
