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Speech by Alain Berset, Secretary General of the Council of Europe

Madam President, Madam Secretary General, Members of the Parliamentary Assembly,

I am pleased to be joined by Tanja Gonggrijp for her first PACE session as Deputy Secretary General.

It is not our only first. Last week, we opened the Council of Europe’s first permanent observer office to the United Nations in New York. Ukraine’s Foreign Affairs Minister Andrii Sybiha was there with us. It gives us a stronger voice where decisions affecting Europe’s future are discussed.

Ukraine was at the heart of my meetings in New York and Washington, including with members of the US Congress.

Every conversation came back to accountability. So did this Assembly, when it called for a tribunal on the crime of aggression that many thought impossible. This is of particular importance as the war is escalating, as we saw yesterday with the attacks targeting the National Academy of Sciences in Kyiv, among other civilian institutions.

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The new office will put accountability for Ukraine on the global agenda and keep it there. It will also bring the Council of Europe and the other regional organisations closer together, as part of our wider strategy to respond to the fragmentation of international law.

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Every organisation I met in New York and in Washington asked the same thing: how does the Council of Europe hold 46 countries to the same rules.

I told them the truth. We don’t do it alone. You do.

Every time the Council of Europe’s common legal space grows, it grows because a parliament turned a judgment of the European Court of Human Rights into its own national law.

That is convergence. It gives Europe stability, and there is no security without it.

Seven hundred million people live inside this common legal space. We built it for the order that is now in rupture. The reform of our Organisation is about carrying it into the order that is emerging.

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The Committee of Ministers asked me for proposals to strengthen the Council of Europe’s role and effectiveness in a changed Europe, and it sets the political direction in May 2027.

Force is spreading at the expense of law. It does not stay between states. It weakens our own democracies too.

In this Europe, we need warning before a crisis arrives, somewhere to meet while it lasts, and legal support once it is over. It is exactly what we are doing to support Ukraine. How far we go is always a question about the decisions that are taken in this House.

But what the Council of Europe is for does not change.

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As one of the Council of Europe’s two statutory organs, the Assembly has a central role, complementary to that of governments.

You have your own perspective to bring, and we need it early.

Your debate this morning asked how core values meet the challenges ahead. That is the question we have to answer.

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The rupture will not slow down for us. Europe will not stay a continent of democracy, human rights and the rule of law by standing still. Neither will this Organisation.

Thank you. I look forward to your questions.