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

Deputy Minister Pryhodko,
Ambassador Tochytskyi,
Ms Mezentseva-Fedorenko,
Dear colleagues,

Yesterday afternoon, a Russian drone struck the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in the heart of Kyiv. Scientists and staff were killed at their desks.

An academy of sciences works in decades. Ukraine is being attacked by a country that wants it to think in days.

The Council of Europe Action Plan I am presenting today runs to the end of this decade. Everything in it is built for the long term, so that no afternoon can take it away.

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The plan is called “Democratic Security for Ukraine.”

One word gets all the attention. Security is how Europe sees defence, borders, energy and technology. What receives much less attention is that none of it protects anyone unless the courts work, the parliament still decides, and people have access to information they can trust.

That is democratic security. It addresses cyberattacks, disinformation and terrorism as much as it protects institutions and rights.

Democratic security is not the reduction of freedoms in the name of protecting them. It does not replace military security either. Ukraine needs weapons and air defence. It is a question of survival, and it is also why Europe is rearming.

Democratic security is what makes every other form of security sustainable and accountable.

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No peace in Ukraine will hold without it.

So the first thing this plan does is help make a peace plan work. It also strengthens Ukraine’s democratic resilience, through good governance, the rule of law and human rights. And it aligns Ukrainian reforms with European standards, Ukraine’s path into the European Union.

The work runs across four areas that hold together. Accountability, with evidence-based investigations of war crimes. Social inclusion, protecting minorities and women, supporting veterans, helping children come home. Democratic institutions, local governance and information integrity. And independent justice, including the fight against corruption.

None of this is improvised. It rests on Council of Europe conventions, on the recommendations of our monitoring and advisory bodies, and on the case law of the European Court of Human Rights.

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The Court is the only international court ruling on the human rights violations of Russia’s war of aggression. Around it, the Council of Europe has built what did not exist before. A Register of Damage to record every loss. A Claims Commission to turn those losses into compensation. A Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression.

Last week I took Ukraine into every meeting I had at the UN General Assembly and in Washington, including with members of Congress. Accountability was at the centre of all of them. That is a key part of what our new permanent observer office to the United Nations is there to do. I opened it in the presence of Minister Sybiha.

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That is political work, and we are doing more of it.

On the children taken from Ukraine. On the people living under occupation. On minority rights in Transcarpathia, where we offer good offices to the Ukrainian and Hungarian ombudspersons.

This is a different Council of Europe. The reform we are taking forward is about exactly this: an organisation with the political weight to match its legal authority. Ukraine needs an organisation that can do both. So does the rest of Europe.

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The Council of Europe did not invent democratic security for this plan. It comes from our first summit in 1993 in Vienna, where Europe’s heads of state named what would destroy it: territorial ambitions, aggressive nationalism, and spheres of influence.

They named those dangers as things Europe had left behind. All three are back, and they are operating now in Ukraine and beyond.

So the concept has not changed. The threats it was written against have returned. Everything we do has to answer them as they are today.

That is what the Action Plan is for. And it is what the Council of Europe accountability mechanisms exist to do.

I will stop there. Our panellists know this work better than anyone, and I want to hear from them.

Thank you.