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

Good morning, everyone. It is good to see so many of you here again after the launch of the hackathon yesterday.

I know you have been busy. I am grateful to see you back in the Hemicycle. I suspect some of you saw “speech by the Secretary General” on the programme and thought: finally, a few minutes of rest.

Not quite.

Because rest is exactly what those who spread hate, online and offline, hope we will do.
They count on fatigue. They count on the rest of us stepping back.

***

On this International Day for Countering Hate Speech, we refuse to step back.

We stand with the victims of hate, be it in words or in deeds.

For all those targeted because of who they are, whom they love, what they believe, where they come from, or how others choose to see them.

But solidarity is not enough.

So last December I appointed my Special Representative on antisemitism, anti-Muslim hatred and all forms of religious intolerance.

In the face of hatred, we can be spectators. We can wait and hope it passes.

We can speak eloquently of values and quietly accept irrelevance.

Or we can do what the Council of Europe was built to do: make hate answerable.

***

That is Europe’s task today. Not a sermon. Not retreat. Not a competition to shout louder than those who feed on fear.

What we need is a strategy for democratic security. One where hate speech is met with the law. And the good news is that it already exists.

Let me give you three examples. And stay with me to the end.

***

A young man stands up for a minority. For that, a newspaper brands him and his friends enemies of the nation. It calls on employers to refuse them work and on officials to push them out.

They turn to their own courts for protection. The courts call it criticism, and let it stand.

A small community of believers tries to open a school for their children. When the neighbours find out, they barricade the doors. Then come the threats and the abuse.

No one is ever punished. Years pass, and the school never opens.

A politician with his own TV show and a seat in parliament spends years calling one group parasites and calling another’s genocide a lie.

They take him to court. The court sides with the speaker, and dismisses their claim.

***

This could be the end of the story. But in each case, another court looked again.

It said this was not opinion and not debate. It was hatred. And the state had failed these people.

That court is the European Court of Human Rights.

These rulings are among more than a million it has dealt with since its creation.

***

The Court. The European Convention on Human Rights it rests on.

And around them, a system of standards and monitoring. Across 46 countries.

This is the Council of Europe’s common legal space.

Standards are the glue.

Four years ago, the Council of Europe set out how Europe answers hate speech: the most serious forms treated as crimes, the rest met through civil law, education, and support for those targeted.

Two years later, we added a standard on hate crime, because we saw what hate speech becomes when it is left alone.

Together they answer not only how to respond to hate, but when.

***

But technology moves fast.

Today, hate is infrastructure. A single person, a single bot, a single algorithm can reach millions.

So this year we went further.

In March, we agreed two more standards: one to stop artificial intelligence from absorbing our prejudices and multiplying them, the other to confront the abuse and disinformation pushing women out of public life.

Let me thank the European Union’s DG Justice and Consumers, the EEA and Norway Grants, and Monaco’s Presidency of the Committee of Ministers, for standing with us against hate speech and hate crime.

***

And let me end with a call.

Hate online does not stop at borders, and neither can our answer.

So in my annual report this year, I asked whether the time has come to build something new: a binding international instrument on preventing and combating hate speech and hate crime.

One that says clearly what must be treated as a crime, and binds states to face it together.

That is how we answer hate. Together. And we have done it before.

Thank you.