“Our two organisations are peace projects”, stressed Alain Berset, Secretary General of the Council of Europe, in a speech to the Permanent Council of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on Friday 31 October.
The fact remains that, faced with the current security challenges, the two institutions are struggling to “act in time”, he notes.
He goes on to cite the war in Ukraine, climate change, artificial intelligence, the crisis of multilateralism, growing rearmament and the retreat of democracy as examples.
“We could soon face a continent with stronger militaries but weaker democracies”, said the Secretary-General, who argues for “a security architecture protecting Europe both from outside attacks and internal erosion” and is calling for us to think in terms of “democratic security”.
During his visit to Vienna, Alain Berset met Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen and several Austrian officials.
He stressed to them the need to explore the Council of Europe’s tools in a pan-European context and beyond in order to promote common fundamental values.
In his view, the New Democratic Pact for Europe, which he launched this year, is a priority, and he reiterated the significance of this collective effort based on three pillars: education, protection and innovation.
This was a theme he developed on 30 October at a public lecture at the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna’s School of Advanced International Studies.
Defining democratic security as “the heart of Europe’s new order – and our first line of defence”, he said: “Democracy, security, remembrance – these words, which once defined the post-war order, are today dismissed as ‘woke’. In this new world, democracy is seen as a weakness, truth as an opinion, and justice as an option. The greatest danger is not collapse – it is sleepwalking into the future where liberty is restricted in the name of protecting it, where rules are bent under the guise of sovereignty, security or emergency, where institutions are weakened out of calculation or cynicism”.
Link to the website of the New Democratic Pact for Europe: https://aeur.eu/f/j8o (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)