Tricky dialogue with the Russian Federation, be it over Syria or Ukraine, was the main subject of a speech by France's President François Hollande to the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) plenary in Strasbourg on Tuesday 11 October.
More than ever, we need the Council of Europe, said Hollande, and its values should inspire people. He took advantage of his speech to announce the holding of a Council of Europe summit (CoE) in 2019, the year marking 70 years of the CoE. His speech to PACE was the first by a French head of state since Jacques Chirac’s in 1997. The 2019 summit will take place in Strasbourg, explained French Secretary of State for European Affairs Harlem Désir, who was accompanying Hollande. France will be chairing the rotating CoE presidency in 2019.
Eagerly awaited on the question of tricky relations with Russia, particularly since the Russian veto of a resolution on Syria presented by France to the United Nations’ Security Council, Hollande said Russia's President Vladimir Putin was due to be travelling to Paris soon (19 October) and Hollande could imagine the visit could talk about Syria and nothing but Syria, and had told the Russians this. He said that Putin had preferred to postpone the visit but that would not prevent other talks taking place.
Hollande said France had a major disagreement with Russia over Syria and if dialogue was needed, it would have to be firm, frank, have clear foundations and be preceded by an end to the bombings Syria is involved in. He said Aleppo was a call from human consciousness.
The French president also brought up the Ukrainian question, ahead of a planned meeting between Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel and Putin to discuss the Minsk agreements. Hollande said he was personally committed in the Normandy format (France, Germany, Ukraine and Russia) but said that progress was too slow and progress was needed on the political and military fronts. He said he was prepared to organise a new Normandy meeting.
On the refugee crisis, Hollande said he was sure that the answer requires controlling the European Union’s external borders, including an effective sharing out of refugees, and pledged that France would accept 30,000 refugees by 2017. He talked about removal of the Calais jungle, promising that each of the 7,000 people living there in dreadful conditions would be housed in a centre where they would be able to lodge a request for asylum.
Commenting on the state of emergency in France after the Paris attacks of November 2015, the French president wanted to reassure PACE that this involved using Article 15 of the European Convention of Human Rights that allows a country to suspend rights that it guarantees. He said that in France, the security imperative remains under the control of the judiciary and the measures decided upon to give the administrative authority crucial resources were proportionate and validated by the constitutional council. He said it was not the same as for Turkey’s reaction to its attempted coup but France's position, he said, is still dialogue and the search for peace. (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)