Keynote address by Mr Alain Berset, Secretary General of the Council of Europe

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Prime Minister of Croatia, Andrej Plenković,
President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Petra Bayr,
United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Policy, Guy Ryder,
Excellencies,
Dear participants, here in Strasbourg and online,

Welcome to the Council of Europe.

Thank you to France, the Grand Est Region, the European Collectivity of Alsace and the City of Strasbourg for co-organising this year’s World Forum for Democracy.

A living democracy

Eight days ago, on the same Sunday, Serbians and Brazilians lined up to vote.

In Serbia, students who had protested for two years won, on the highest turnout since the breakup of Yugoslavia.

The side that lost accepted the results before midnight. In Brazil, the side that lost called the result impossible to accept.

Just three days later, students marched across Indonesia against fires and rising prices. And in India, the “cockroach” youth movement demanded the election chief’s resignation over millions of names struck from the voter rolls. And across Europe, youth protests have gone viral, from school gates to city squares.

All of this in only two weeks. Two weeks. In some of the largest, oldest and youngest democracies on the planet. And as well all know, tomorrow, it is Americans’ turn to vote.

Born into rupture

In this situation, what strikes me is how decentralised these movements are. Most answer to no party and many to no leader, yet they are moving at once on different continents.

They are Generation Z, and the oldest of them are not yet thirty. Their grievances are local, but their question is the same: what future is left for us?

And who can blame them? 

Today’s young people have grown up amid more armed conflicts than at any time since the Second World War. They have seen Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and force take the place of law between states. They have lived through a pandemic and the climate crisis. And now those who build artificial intelligence warn that it could end humanity.

Another rupture, less visible but just as dangerous, is happening inside our societies. Across the world, more and more people feel the system no longer works for them. Housing costs more. Healthcare is out of reach for many. Wages do not follow. Wealth is concentrating at the very top.

All together, these ruptures destroy perspectives. And in a democracy, people who cannot see a future go looking for one elsewhere.

Scapegoats or foresight

Elsewhere, someone is already waiting with a simple answer and a scapegoat.

These answers often solve nothing. They only break the system people believe has failed them. For many, that is enough.

Simple answers live in the short term. This year’s Forum pushes the other way, with foresight at its centre. Over the next two days, you will do what politics rarely has time for. You will look beyond the next crisis and test today’s decisions against scenarios for the next ten, twenty or thirty years.

Public order and public trust

Foresight, like critical thinking, starts by taking the simple narratives apart.

When young people protest, it is tempting to answer with curfews and to answer with bans, or to see a foreign hand behind every crowd.

Foreign information manipulation and interference threaten democracy. Of the fifteen countries most targeted in the world last year, eleven are Council of Europe member States.

We are working on a legal instrument to counter this threat. But young people do not fill the streets of a dozen countries, in Europe and beyond, because someone abroad told them to. Dismissing them as manipulation is its own kind of disinformation.

There can be no double standard. A protest we dislike cannot be foreign interference, while a protest we like is democracy at work.

Violence must be condemned, wherever it comes from, not least because it discredits those protesting peacefully.

But once violence is reason enough to take away the right to protest, every other freedom becomes easier to take.

The security democracy needs

The answer to rupture cannot be less democracy in the name of security. Any regime can impose order. Only a democracy also protects people from those in power. That is democratic security.

It is not a luxury for calmer times. Without it, even the hard security begins to crack. With tens of millions of Europeans at risk of poverty or social exclusion, social vulnerability becomes democratic fragility.

So democratic security begins with institutions people trust. It begins with democracies that hold under pressure. Today, it takes independent courts, transparent elections and free media, as well as the capacity to tackle new challenges like cyberattacks, foreign interference and artificial intelligence.

What people want from the Pact

One in five are worried about what artificial intelligence is doing to democracy. They want platforms to answer for what they spread. They ask who owns their media. They want judges and anti-corruption bodies no government can capture.

These few elements are among the first trends from the consultation on the New Democratic Pact for Europe.  

More than three thousand contributions have come in, some from as far as Mexico and South Korea. And I think this Forum is the high point of that consultation, which runs until the end of the year.

So we launched the New Democratic Pact for Europe last year to rebuild trust in democratic institutions. It gives governments the basis to renew their commitment to democracy in the face of new technological and geopolitical realities.

In May next year, ministers from the 46 Council of Europe member States will decide on the next steps.

The choice is ours

Young people are already a step ahead. Last week, Tijana Mirić stood in this room and spoke for the Serbian students who marched for two years. Winning an election, she said, does not end the struggle. Now comes the harder part: staying true to the streets once you are inside the institutions.

Two years ago, many told those students that what they wanted was impossible. And eight days ago, it happened.

The future of democracy is just as open. The choice is ours.

Thank you. I wish you an excellent Forum, and welcome again in Strasbourg.