Check against delivery
Speech by Mr Alain Berset, Secretary General of the Council of Europe

Dear Bertil Cottier,
Dear Tena Šimonović Einwalter,
Dear representatives of equality bodies,
Excellencies,
 

Good afternoon and thank you all for being here.

It is a pleasure to open this day of exchanges between the Council of Europe’s European Commission against Racism and Intolerance, ECRI, its partners and the equality bodies of our member states. I’m particularly happy to be here – it’s my first time participating in this seminar.

As we all know, when times are calm, everyone praises human rights.
Everyone agrees on the need for a commission against racism or an equality body.
But in times of rupture, institutions like ECRI are pushed into the spotlight.

And they become less popular.

Those are the moments when the Council of Europe must act.
This Organisation was not made for calm days.
It was built in the aftermath of the Second World War.
And racism was at the heart of the ideology that led to that war.

But racism is not always so visible. Most of the time, it is quieter.
Everyday racism wears a democracy down from the inside. Little by little.

You know, it is the CV that gets no answer, because of the name at the top.
It is the cancer screening tool that doesn’t work well on dark skin.
It can be the child laughed at for what is in her lunch box.

These may look like isolated incidents. They are not. They are part of a wider climate. We see it in ECRI’s monitoring: across Europe, whole groups of people are framed as security risks or blamed for problems they did not create. Just imagine what that means. The targets change, but the pattern stays the same. Difference turns into suspicion, and suspicion into political currency.

Hateful narratives that once lived on the margins are now part of the mainstream, in politics and online.

Artificial intelligence can produce them at enormous scale, at almost no cost. History teaches us that scapegoating rarely begins with violence. It begins with words, repeated by people with authority until they sound like common sense.

When people become used to hateful content, discrimination becomes easier to justify. The damage goes far beyond those directly targeted. It changes who feels able to take part in public life, and who feels protected by public institutions. A democracy in which some citizens fall silent is a weaker democracy. It is what we are tackling with the New Democratic Pact for Europe.

So, those who frame whole groups of people as a security risk have it backwards. Racism and intolerance are the real risk to democratic security.

Democratic security begins with institutions people can trust, and it begins with laws that protect everyone equally.

Equality bodies, and many of you here represent them, are a central part of this democratic security architecture - and you are also a central part of the New Democratic Pact for Europe. You are often the first to notice what others see too late: a rise in complaints after a heated campaign or one inflammatory statement, or people who quietly withdraw from public life.

I already mentioned Artificial Intelligence. It could help you see these signs even earlier. But only if platforms and developers work with you and take their responsibilities seriously.

When you raise the alarm early, we can stop hate before it is “normalised”.

But there is nothing normal about a CV ignored because of a name.
There is nothing normal about a medical tool that doesn’t work well on dark skin.
And there is nothing normal about a little girl who stops bringing her lunch to school.

What makes a difference for her is an institution that listens and acts. And very often, that institution is you.

And the more you are needed, the less popular you may become. But the Council of Europe was never meant to be popular. We were never meant to be popular. We were meant to protect people. And in your case, protect people from racism and hate. Especially when times are hard.

Thank you.