“As missiles strike, international law is weaponised”, denounced the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Alain Berset, on Sunday 1 March, after Israel and the United States began bombing Iran.
“This escalation, together with the succession of recent crises, underlines the need for a common European legal framework at the level of the forty-six member states of the Council of Europe”, he continued.
A framework that he wants to be capable of “judging violations and the use of force and sanctions, while ensuring continuous, coherent decisions without paralysis”.
“What was once a discussion is now a matter of strategic imperative”, he asserted, stressing the “deconstruction phase of the international legal order”, where “impulses and the power of the strongest are seeking to govern relations between states”.
“Fragmentation is no longer sustainable”, said the Secretary General, denouncing a pan-European security system that “too often (...) relies on ad hoc formats, with no common legal basis, no permanent decision-making authority, and no structures to ensure continuity”.
Alain Berset called on “Europe as a whole” to “act to de-escalate the conflict across the Gulf while protecting the safety of its citizens in the region. It must insist on respect for international law, including the Charter of the United Nations”.
He called for a ceasefire and announced that he would put the escalation in the Middle East on the agenda for the next meeting of the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers “to initiate a collective reflection on Europe’s capacity to respond coherently and within a common legal framework”.
This is no time for procrastination, and time is running out, Alain Berset reiterated.
“If we don’t organise the collective wider European security within a permanent and binding legal structure, it will remain reactive to crises shaped by others”.
For Europe, it is a question of proving its willingness to “shape the emerging order or merely observe its fragmentation”.
“Inaction is not prudence. It’s abdication”.
Link to the statement: https://aeur.eu/f/kz3 (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)