Council of Europe
Andreas Kiefer
Secretary General and Director
Andreas Kiefer is the Secretary General of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe. He holds a doctorate of Law, as well as a degree in “General Management with a focus on public management” obtained in 2010. He was Director of the European Affairs Service of Land Salzburg regional government from 1996 to 2010. From 2000 to 2009 he represented the Austrian Länder in the EU’s Intergovernmental Conferences (IGC) negotiating the Treaty on a Constitution for Europe and the Lisbon Treaty at working level and subsequently he was responsible for setting up the Lisbon-Treaty-based scheme for monitoring subsidiarity and proportionality by the Länder. He served as Secretary General of the Conference of Presidents of Regions with Legislative Powers (REGLEG) in 2003. His contribution to the creation of the EuRegio Salzburg-Berchtesgadener Land-Traunstein with nearly 100 municipalities is a concrete example for applied cross-border co-operation. Andreas Kiefer served as chairman and member of local electoral committees for municipal, regional, federal and European elections and initiated a citizens’ participation project to integrate new residents and to create a municipal mission statement in his home municipality of Kuchl (Dorferneuerung). He was elected Secretary General of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe on 17 March 2010 and re-elected in March 2015 for a term of five years. Andreas Kiefer has published about local self-government, regionalism, federalism, interregional and cross-border co-operation, regions with legislative powers, the Austrian political system, about the local and regional dimension in the Council of Europe and the Committee of the Regions.