28/12/2001 (Agence Europe) - The CEMR (Council of European Municipalities and Regions), chaired by Valery Giscard d'Estaing celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of its foundation in Rome, at a ceremony of the House of Deputies, on 14 December. On the eve of his appointment by the Laeken Summit as Chair of the Convention to prepare the next IGC, Giscard d'Estaing had, as a press release points out, recalled the Philadelphia Convention, to stress the importance of setting up this new Convention.