Foreword One hundred year ago, one of the founding organisations of UCLG, the International Union of Local Authorities held its first congress in Ghent, Belgium. Becoming the ‘nerve centre’ for international relations and decentralised cooperation, its creation marked the beginning of the international municipal movement. In the framework of the Centenary celebration, UCLG wanted to pay homage to this movement by publishing a collection of testimonies. That has been a joint project involving numerous figures that kindly accepted to share their experiences. Selahattin Yildirim, former Secretary General of MEWA delivers his vision of the movement by retracing the key steps of the movement since its creation. This introduction, along with the academic contributions of Pierre-Yves Saunier and Renaud Payre were extremely useful in guiding research. On behalf of the UCLG Presidency and the World Secretariat, would like to thank those who contributed to the project, in particular Elisabeth Gateau, Jean-Pierre MBassi, Paolo Morello, Margarita Obiols, Antonia Sabartes, Alain le Saux, Jeremy Smith, Jean-Marie Tétart and Peter Woods for their testimonies, and also all those men and women who contributed to the construction and reinforcement of our international movement that continues up to 2013. The UCLG World Secretariat
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