The former minister took part in parliament’s Foreign Policy Day.
Keystone / Peter Klaunzer
In the face of a wave of demonstrations across Europe, the Secretary General of the Council of Europe defends the right to demonstrate while strongly condemning the violence. For Alain Berset, these mobilisations reveal a deep malaise: the destruction of future prospects for an entire generation.
From France to Albania, via Italy, Spain and Portugal, for several weeks now, European youth have been taking to the streets. The list of concerns include housing that has become inaccessible, schools and public services degraded, the cost of living and precariousness, mistrust of leaders, among others. This anger does not spare Switzerland: a day of mobilisation is planned for November 20 in several cities in the country.
Symptom of a ‘living democracy’
Sometimes punctuated by violence, these demonstrations question the state of democracy on the continent. For Berset, these movements are above all the symptom of a “living democracy”.
“You have the right to express your opinions, to meet peacefully, to have demands, to see that we can have differences, to have respect for different positions, to debate them. All this is part of a living democracy,” he said on Wednesday during the Swiss public broadcaster programme RTS Forum.
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The former Swiss minister, who took part in the Swiss Parliament’s Foreign Policy Day, said there are also limits. “When it turns violent, when movements are instrumentalised by violent groups to break or to steal, it is absolutely unacceptable,” he continues. “And it’s a real problem because it indirectly calls into question the often very legitimate motivations of the young people who are mobilising.”
Different causes, a common malaise
What strikes him most is the simultaneity of these movements in European countries with very different national contexts. “The reasons that pushed young people into the streets in France are not the same as those we see in Albania or Serbia,” he said. “On the other hand, they all refer to the same root of the problem: the lack of prospects in a world dominated by crises, wars and the feeling that we do not really know what the future will bring.”
For him, the contrast with the young people of 20 or 25 years ago is striking: they had “the impression of having in front of [them] a boulevard that was opening up to have perspectives, projects, to develop”.
Today’s young people are facing “a continent on which war is back, in Ukraine”, he regrets. Not to mention “the war in Iran”, “violations of international law almost everywhere”, “the climate crisis”, “the pandemic crisis” from which we have emerged, “artificial intelligence” which is said to destroy us, he lists. This accumulation of threats “destroys prospects” and undermines “confidence in democratic systems”.
Warning against a security drift
Faced with calls to limit the right to demonstrate, especially in France, to avoid looting and other destruction, Alain Berset warns against a security drift. “We must be very careful not to accept that our freedoms are diminished or reduced for what we think is a secure democracy,” he insists.
The Council of Europe recently called on the states concerned to respect the right to demonstrate. For Berset, the question is complex but essential: “If we had to take this reason [violence] to destroy freedom of expression, then the question that arises is: ‘What’s the next one we’re going to touch?’”
The Serbian example illustrates the ability of democracy to channel protest: after two years of “not always easy” demonstrations following the deadly collapse of a train station in Novi Sad, students “managed to win elections last Sunday”. He added that “we are now waiting to see them at work to carry out their own project for society”.
Faced with this accumulation of crises, Alain Berset formulates a wish that may come as a surprise: “We must return to something wiser, a little more boring. I miss a slightly more boring world. We could use a little more boredom.”
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Translated from French, reviewed by an English Department journalist.
