“There is no human right that survives an uninhabitable continent”, said Petra Bayr, President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, at the opening of the plenary session on Monday 28 September, before announcing a debate, held on Friday 2 October, that concluded with the adoption of a Resolution calling on the Council of Europe to draw up a binding convention on the right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment.
Adopted by 78 votes to eight (including seven from the Conservatives, Patriots & Affiliates CEPA group), with six abstentions, the Resolution recalls that “Europe is warming faster than any other continent - more than twice the global average” and stressing also that this climate disruption directly threatens the planet’s habitability – the prerequisite for life and, therefore, the foundation of all other human rights guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights and the revised European Social Charter.
Rejecting the argument that insufficient global action justifies European inaction, the Resolution underlines that: “recent studies estimate that, even if other regions of the world were not to step up their efforts, reducing European emissions would cost less than the damage to our continent that inaction would entail”.
The Assembly therefore calls on Member States to recognise the right to a healthy environment at national level and to “support, within the Council of Europe, the drafting of a legally binding instrument guaranteeing this right as a standalone one, with particular regard to the rights of young people and future generations”.
Young people feature prominently in the Resolution’s call to action that stresses the need to harness their creativity, commitment and expertise to tackle climate disruption, the consequences of which they will face throughout their lives.
For the Assembly, the time has come to move beyond token consultation and to have them “contribute to the formulation, arbitration and monitoring of climate policies, including their economic, tax and financial dimensions”.
In this context, the Assembly welcomed the recommendation of the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers on young people and climate action and called on Member States to implement it without delay.
In a recommendation adopted immediately after the Resolution, the Assembly also calls on the Committee of Ministers: - to pay particular attention to the implementation of the judgment delivered by the European Court of Human Rights against Switzerland in April 2024, which found the country responsible for climate inaction; - to supplement the Action Plan for the Council of Europe Strategy on the Environment (2025–2030) with an initiative on futures literacy (the ability to anticipate and shape futures) and intergenerational justice; - to begin work without delay on the binding legal instrument called for in the Resolution.
“Let us start now”, the Assembly’s President said last Monday. “I ask the responsible committees to open the preparatory work this autumn, so that the text exists before the next disaster dictates it for us”.
Link to the Resolution: https://aeur.eu/f/nqb (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)