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

Deputy Prime Minister Popșoi,
Ministers,
Excellencies,

You heard it again and again these past months.

Europe is weak.

It is too slow. Too old. Too divided. Too attached to rules.

And some start believing it.

They say if others ignore the rules, we should too.

The message is simple: to survive the rupture, Europe must learn to behave like those who caused it.

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But that is not who we are as Europeans.

And it does not serve Europe’s interests. 

Those interests are unmistakable.

They are at the core of today’s agenda.

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It is our support to Ukraine, including the work for accountability, during wartime and into peace and reconstruction.

Nothing, not stalled negotiations, not even conflicts like the war in Iran, can distract us from this priority.

It is foreign information manipulation and interference, reaching into our elections, our courts, our schools, our phones.

Silently. One algorithm at a time.

It is migration.

When divisions emerged among us, we brought the debate back to the Council of Europe — within the Convention, within the law.

The Chișinău Declaration is the next political step.

It is the Proceeds of Crime Protocol. Democratic security at its most concrete.

It is our External Strategy and our partnership with the European Union.

It is the New Democratic Pact for Europe.

A pact for resilient democracies. For rights that hold under pressure. For multilateralism that works. And for the courage to confront what this Organisation must become.

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The agenda before us today is redefining Europe’s security architecture.

An architecture where rights and law are as strategic as missiles and drones.

Democratic security is its centre of gravity.

It keeps power subject to democratic accountability, human rights, and the rule of law.

Without democratic security, hard security begins to crack — even when it looks strong.

And it leads to only one conclusion: the Council of Europe is a geopolitical force.

A force for security and stability.

One that Europe is not yet using to its full potential. 

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This force rests on something unique in the world.

One legal space. Forty-six countries. The Convention. The Court.

And a system of standards and monitoring that holds it all together.

The Court has dealt with more than one million applications.

Its decisions have changed lives and held governments to account.

Three weeks ago, I was in Ireland.

Without the Convention, there would be no Good Friday Agreement.

In Sarajevo, days later, the same reality.

The Convention has been central to Bosnia and Herzegovina’s constitutional order since Dayton.

The Council of Europe has been a stabilising force on this continent for nearly eight decades.

And it stands ready — wherever it is needed.

Autonomy without domination. Co-operation without submission. Security without surrender.

This is Europe’s common legal space.

Member states built it together.

It is time to use it as the geopolitical force that it is.

***

Here is what that force looks like in practice.

Foreign information manipulation and interference demands a common response.

Moldova knows this better than most.

A Framework Convention is the right legal instrument.

Make it a cornerstone of our common legal space.

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And then there is Ukraine.

The ultimate test of what this common legal space can do.

Three pillars.

The European Court of Human Rights. The Register of Damage and the International Claims Commission. And the Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression.

Close to forty states and the European Union have declared their intention to join the Tribunal, inside and outside Europe.

Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs signed the Convention establishing the Claims Commission earlier this week.

Accountability is open to the world.

Because international law applies to all.

No exceptions. No double standards.

Ukraine is the Council of Europe’s top priority.

We are building accountability where none existed before.

And we are placing democratic resilience at the heart of recovery and reconstruction.

This is a long-term engagement, at a time when the ultra-short term is becoming the norm.

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Looking around this room, I think of our founders.

They too faced rupture.

Force had torn apart the world order. Millions had paid the price.

They were not idealists.

They were realists who knew that force without law produces only the next war.

So they built something different: a common legal space, built on democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.

A continent that chose law over revenge and unity over division was not weak. It was prepared.

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We have shown that we are prepared. 

In every item on this agenda. In every decision to be made in this room.

Without the common legal space, Europe becomes what others want it to be: a market to exploit, a territory to pressure, a map to bargain over.

With it, Europe is a political order. One that sets its own terms.

The force of law over the law of force.

That is what the Council of Europe was built for.

That is what this moment demands.

The choices we make here today will define generations to come.

Thank you.