ECR Members Matteo Bianchi (Mayor of Morazzone and Member of Italian Parliament) and Juraj Droba (Chairman of Bratislava Self-Governing Region) spoke at the Baku Summit in Azerbaijan on 8-9 June in the localism panel. The panel looked at how localism can help improve the economy and governance of a locality. It also looked at the kind of local action required by current global issues and challenges. The panellists underlined that in the current multi-level governance system, each government has a role to play and that in order to be effective, the system needs to be bottom-up.

The Baku Summit was organised by the Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe. It brought together leaders from politics, business, government, academia and the not-for-profit sector from across Europe and the world, in order to shape the debate on our shared future.  The Summit explored the topics of the digital economy, economic freedom, connectivity through transportation, education transformation, local governance and energy security .

The localism and governance panel was featured as the closing panel discussion. The panellists were Mr Matteo Bianchi, Mr Juraj Droba, Mr Elmar Valiyev (Mayor of Ganja city in Azerbaijan) and Mr Max Rangeley (Ediyor at the Cobden Centre). The panel moderated by Neva-Sadikoglu-Novaky (Secretary-General of the ECR Group in the European Committee of the Regions).

Localism is a founding principle of the ECR Group in the European Committee of the regions and is featured in the founding documents of the ACRE family; it is featured in the Reykjavik Declaration of ACRE and the Prague Deceleration of the ECR Group in the European Parliament. Localism is the idea that in governance, decisions should be taken at the lowest practicable level, by the individual where possible and by national authorities in preference to supranational bodies.

According to Mr Droba, reshaping the EU and its neighbouring countries into entities that truly work for the citizens will only happen if political activity is conducted at the lowest meaningful level. "Localism prevents governments from making decision which do not reflect people's wishes. The further away from the citizens decisions are made, the less they reflect people's preferences", explained Mr Droba.

Matteo Bianchi MP agreed that a localist approach is the best way to achieve economic development. To illustrate his case, he used the example of Northern Italy: "Coming from Lombardy, I see that public spending is much more efficient when decisions are taken close to the citizens instead of being taken in Rome or in Brussels. Studies show that if all public services in Italy were run as efficiently as in my region, Italy would save four billion EUR a year".

The Mayor of Ganja explained that local government is one of the cornerstones of Azerbaijan's constitutional system. Under President Aliyev, Azerbaijan has also taken strong measures to decentralise, including referenda in 2009 and 2016 that voted to increase local governance through the introduction, and then empowerment, of municipalities.

Max Rangley underlined the economic argument in favour of greater localism and explained how global trends like the digital revolution and the digital economy can revolutionise local governance.