Between the European Political Community (EPC) and the Council of Europe, “the best avenue to have some more collaboration is to work on the substance of issues”, declared the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Alain Berset, on Tuesday 30 September, during a question-and-answer session with the Parliamentary Assembly of the organisation based in Strasbourg.
Alain Berset had previously pointed out that the EPC, created in 2022 after Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, is a “recent institution”, whose goal is “to have a very informal framework for heads of state and heads of governments to meet”.
Its geographical scope is the same as that of the Council of Europe, which is regularly invited to EPC meetings [Alain Berset will also be at the Copenhagen meeting on 2 October – editor’s note].
The difference between the two institutions, continues Alain Berset, is that the Council of Europe is “an organisation with a very long-standing history anchored in all the history of the continent since World War II”, and one which has developed numerous instruments.
He cited the European Convention on Human Rights and the Court of Human Rights of the same name, which oversees its implementation, as well as various thematic conventions. One of the recent conventions he noted was devoted to AI, and was “the first legally binding treaty on artificial intelligence, protecting the Rule of law, democracy and human rights in this context”; the convention was also open to third countries.
Finding a “convergence” between the EPC and the Council of Europe was “much more difficult than I was thinking at the very beginning”, admitted Alain Berset.
Working together “on the substance of the issues” is therefore, in his view, the best way to achieve this.
By way of example, he cites the fight against foreign interference and disinformation, a subject which the EPC took up at an early stage, but for which the Council of Europe can offer its expertise in order to draw up an ad hoc convention, a competence that the EPC does not have.
At the same meeting, Alain Berset announced to the Parliamentary Assembly that a Council of Europe Office would be opened in New York, probably as early as next year.
This Office should enable European principles and values to be brought “higher up in the United Nations system, which needs all the constructive forces that may exist”. (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)