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

 

OPENING

Parliamentary Assembly President,

Parliamentary Assembly Secretary General,

Excellencies,

Dear members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe,

Ladies and gentlemen,

It is an honour to address you at the opening of this parliamentary year.

And I take also this occasion to warmly thank the outgoing President, Theodoros Rousopoulos, for the very good collaboration in the last years and for his strong commitment to the Council of Europe and to our shared values.

I. President Bayr

I would like to start by congratulating Petra Bayr on her election.

Madam President, you bring long experience to this role.

You take on this responsibility at a decisive for Europe.

I look forward to working closely with you in the months and years ahead.

II. The World We Thought We Knew

I stood before this Assembly for the first time sixteen months ago in September 2024, just days after taking office.

That same week, at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Venezuela’s foreign minister said it was time to rescue the founding principles of the UN Charter.

In Brussels, the outgoing NATO Secretary General insisted that the Alliance was strong, united, and more important than ever.

In the United States, a presidential candidate said he had a very good relationship with both President Zelenskyy and President Putin, and promised to end the war in Ukraine very quickly.

After the first and only presidential debate, he was trailing in the polls.

And in Greenland, the headlines were about a landslide that triggered a tsunami in a remote fjord.

That was the world we thought we knew.

So why are we acting surprised?

This did not come out of nowhere.

III. THE PERFECT STORM

After the Cold War, Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in exchange for the assurance that its sovereignty and borders would be respected, and that force would not be used against it.

By the time Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, that assurance was broken not once, but twice.

The financial crisis of 2008 exposed years of greed and speculation.

Jobs disappeared.

Public debt exploded.

And it was people, not the banks, who paid the price everywhere.

Accountability stopped with those too big to fail.

COVID-19 also led us to where we are today.

In the first weeks of the pandemic, flights stopped and borders closed.

Governments competed for masks, then for vaccines.

As fear spread, misinformation filled the gaps.

To this add climate change, multilateralism on life support, and the return of certain forms of populism thought long gone, and we entered what I called the perfect storm.

IV. THE ACCELERATION

This can give the illusion that we are witnessing something entirely new.

We are not.

What is new is the acceleration of crises.

It comes with a constant flow of information, and the volatility it creates. 

By now, the patterns are clear.

Positions change within days, if not hours.

Threats are made, only to be reversed.

A so-called “Board of peace” is announced, in an attempt to sideline the United Nations.

Now, power politics have always existed.

What is troubling is where they are reappearing.

Within alliances.

Inside spaces built on law, consent, and predictability.

And that is why we are speaking of a rupture in the world order.

V. DEMOCRATIC SECURITY

We are at a turning point in understanding world power, and Europe’s role in it.

Today, that struggle is framed in terms of security, from national security to energy security, border security, and cybersecurity.

It is invoked to justify decisions abroad.

And to reshape politics at home.

As we see in Greenland, it reaches even questions of territory.

Europe is told that insisting on international law is naïve in an age of hard power.

That rules must bend for security.

But look at where this leads.

We are hearing threats of military action over the territory of a member State.

Once security becomes the overriding logic, everything else becomes negotiable, including sovereignty.

International law remains the last common language capable of restraining power in a fragmenting world.

Institutions dedicated to democracy, human rights, and the rule of law are no longer at the margins of security debates.

They are now Europe’s centre of gravity.

And the Council of Europe was built for this.

Europe does not need to choose between law and security.

That is a false choice.

Law is Europe’s form of power.

Law creates autonomy without domination, co-operation without submission, and security without surrender.

This is what we mean by democratic security.

VI. A TALE OF TWO WORLDS

Charles Dickens wrote A Tale of Two Cities at a moment when an old order was breaking, and no one knew what would replace it.

Europe is facing, once again, two possible worlds.

One where security is reduced to force, and sovereignty becomes negotiable.

And one where security is built on rights, on institutions, and law.

What happens next depends on the choices we make now.

And there are mistakes we cannot afford.

VII. WHAT WE CANNOT GET WRONG

First, we cannot let competing crises pull us off course.

Ukraine risks being pushed into the background as crises compete for attention.

That would be a serious mistake.

This war has not paused.

Strikes on infrastructure are leaving people without heat in subzero temperatures.

And its outcome will shape Europe’s future for decades to come.

Second, international law is not dead.

The Council of Europe was founded on the idea that law, not raw power, must guarantee the dignity and rights of individuals and the sovereign equality of states.

Europe must act to protect its legal framework, and the Council of Europe is ready to play its part.

If Europe fails to articulate a legal and political vision, others will fill the vacuum, shifting security from law to strategic leverage.

Finally, middle powers are not powerless.

Principles without power are fragile, but power without principles is dangerous.

The space between great powers is not empty. It is where Europe must act.

In Greenland or crises like Venezuela, this moment cannot be reduced to a binary choice between sterile condemnation and blind support.

In both cases, we abdicate our own responsibility.

Europe’s task is different.

To refuse a world governed by exceptions, double standards, or competing spheres of influence.

And to insist that security cannot be built by bargaining away the principles that sustain it.

VIII. WHAT THIS ORGANISATION IS FOR

The Council of Europe was not created for moments of comfort.

It was exactly created for moments like this.

When the rules of the old order are no longer assumed, even among those who wrote them.

What other organisation in Europe exists to confront that?

Not as a military actor.

Not as a market.

But as a legal community of forty-six democracies, bound by commitments that cannot be rewritten in crisis.

That gives us a particular responsibility.

And we are acting on it.

When Russia launched its war of aggression against Ukraine, we did not abandon law in the name of force.

We built accountability where none existed before.

The Register of Damage is operational.

In December, states signed the Convention establishing the International Claims Commission.

And last week, we launched the advance team for the Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression.

When the fighting stops, the Council of Europe will still be there.

For institutions. For elections. For democratic recovery.

On migration, Europe is also told there are only two options.

To abandon legal constraints in the name of control.

Or to defend principles while ignoring legitimate pressures.

That is another false choice.

On the road to Chișinău, Ministers are working within the European Convention on Human Rights.

To ensure that security and legality move together.

And information itself has become a security issue.

Polarisation is engineered, amplified by platforms, generative AI, and foreign interference.

That is why the Council of Europe is working on a new Convention on disinformation and foreign interference.

Not to police speech, but to protect democratic choice.

So no democracy is left to face this alone.

CLOSING

Europe is told that it is weak.

That its values are outdated.

That history is passing it by.

The danger is not only that others say this.

It is what we begin to believe it ourselves.

We face temptations as dangerous as the threats.

One is sentimentality.

To speak eloquently of values.

To issue solemn declarations.

And quietly accept irrelevance.

Another is atrophy.

To hold on old structures.

Even as they stop working.

And to mistake continuity for strength.

Neither will protect us.

Another way is possible.

And it is already taking shape.

In Ukraine, by building accountability that will outlast the war.

On migration, by refusing to surrender our legal standards in the name of control.

On disinformation, by defending democratic debate before it is captured or manipulated.

In every place where democratic choice is under pressure.

The deepest rupture today is not just geopolitical.

It is democratic.

In the coming months, we will announce the next stage of our work, with democratic security as our continent’s answer to the emerging world order.

Europe does not need a “me first” politics.

It needs something different.

Democracy first.

Human rights first.

The rule of law first.

Thank you.