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

Good afternoon.

It is a pleasure to join you for this exchange of views. I have been looking forward to it.

Policy planners are the first to confront what the rest of us have yet to face.

That is what foresight is. And that makes this group the right place to ask: are we deciding Europe’s future, or letting others decide it for us?

***

That future, or should I say futures, is where I would like to begin our conversation today. 

One of them looks like the past. It is the return to a Cold War mindset where geography is treated as destiny and influence as zero-sum.

There are two big blocs and spheres of influence. In that world, security is a matter of alignment, not of law.

Another possible future is a multipolar world, with several centres of power, each asserting their own rules.

This is Prime Minister Carney’s middle-power approach. Security becomes a moving target. Double standards spread.

The last scenario is a version of the nineteenth-century logic of power politics. Force sets the terms. Law becomes secondary.

Once security is negotiated outside the rules, the rules don’t survive long.

***

Each of these scenarios is plausible. That is what makes this moment so dangerous.

Even the most optimistic of these futures is a rupture from the world we knew.

But that rupture did not happen overnight.

The financial crisis of 2008. The annexation of Crimea. COVID-19. The full-scale invasion of Ukraine. These were not separate shocks.

Together, they created a perfect storm for the international legal order.

Then came the acceleration: Gaza, Greenland, Iran. Each crisis added pressure to a system already under strain.

***

Where does that leave Europe?

Scrambling for answers. And Europe has reached for the most obvious one: rearmament.

The scale of Europe’s rearmament is striking. Across Council of Europe member states, defence spending now exceeds half a trillion euros annually.

Europe is rearming at a pace not seen since the Cold War.

Imagine a graph. Two axes. One shows military spending. The other, trust in democratic institutions.

Military spending starts low, but it keeps climbing, year after year.

Trust in democratic institutions starts higher, but moves in the opposite direction.

Behind this, a simplistic narrative has emerged: military strength on its own will keep Europe safe. Other forms of so-called “soft” security can wait. 

***

But we don’t have time.

What happens in five or ten years if an extremist government controls a heavily armed state?

The divide between hard and soft security is obsolete.

Today, the real question is whether security rests on force or on law.

The strongest democracies are not just those with large armies. They are the ones where a court can rule against a government and the government complies. Where an election result is accepted. Where people can speak without fear. And where information can be trusted.

Democratic security begins here. With institutions people can trust. With laws that protect everyone equally. And with the stability that holds when everything else is under pressure.

***

These pressures keep evolving. Democratic security must adapt with them.

At stake is whether Europe can defend itself against cyberattacks, disinformation, terrorism, and the threats still to come.

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That’s where the New Democratic Pact for Europe comes into play.

The Pact is a collective effort, led by the Council of Europe, to address the pressures that weaken our democracies. And to do it without undermining the rights these democracies exist to protect.

It starts with a simple question: how should democracy adapt to new technologies and new geopolitical realities?

And it rests on three priorities. Education, to strengthen democratic culture. Protection, to support democracy wherever it is under strain. And innovation, to help our institutions keep pace with fast-moving, cross-border threats.

***

The Pact must do two things at once: respond to the threats we know, and prepare for the ones we cannot see yet.

That requires foresight. Not as a one-off exercise, but as a discipline embedded in how institutions work.

Today’s conference is another step in that direction. Your national expertise is invaluable.

I saw this firsthand a few months ago at the Finnish Parliament, where their Committee for the Future has developed a systematic way of analysing risks.

Your contribution will build on that experience and feed directly into the consultation phase of the Pact already underway.

The early results point in the same direction. Protecting critical thinking from foreign information manipulation and interference. Managing the risks and opportunities of artificial intelligence. And rebuilding trust through stronger accountability and social cohesion.

***

Before I take your questions, let me come back to where we started.

Three futures for Europe: blocs and spheres of influence, a world of deals, or force without rules.

None of them is inevitable.

Which one we get depends in part on choices made in rooms like this one. And those choices must be made for the long term.

Last week, a group of young people handed me an invitation. To the one hundredth anniversary of the Council of Europe in 2049.

They were serious. And they were right.

These young people understand something that is easy to forget: democracy is not made for speed. It is built to last.

***

As crises accelerate, politics is collapsing into the ultra-short term.

The Pact pushes in the opposite direction.

You are part of that push.

Together, we can imagine and build the next generation of democratic security.

Not for the next news cycle. But for the next ten, twenty, thirty years.

That is what this conversation is for.

I look forward to your questions.

Thank you.