The Secretary-General of the Council of Europe, Marija Pejcinovic Buric, has raised alarm over an ascendant far-right across various countries in Europe.
Speaking to the press on Friday, Buric, who will be stepping down from her position in September after five years, voiced her concern about extreme nationalistic, populist, and anti-rights movements that are pulling Europe towards a “wild state.”
The Council of Europe, founded in 1949 in Strasbourg, has 46 member countries following Russia’s expulsion in 2022 due to the invasion of Ukraine.
Buric, a former Croatian foreign minister, recalled that multilateralism and multilateral cooperation were chosen for a reason in the aftermath of the two major wars in Europe. In her view, there is “no alternative” to multilateralism.
Her statements come amid increasing criticism, particularly in the UK and France, of the European Convention on Human Rights, which the Council implements through the European Court of Human Rights.
France and the UK will be electing their legislators in the coming weeks, but Buric doubts that these countries will denounce the convention, which would lead to their exit from the Council of Europe.
International institutions or human rights protection bodies may be easy targets for attack, but Buric remains hopeful that once the elections are over, more "reasonable" voices within all countries will be heard.
Regarding a recent anti-Semitic rape incident involving a teenage girl in the Paris area, the former minister opined that anti-Semitism is one of the different faces of a democratic setback. She expressed her dismay that such an incident could happen again on European soil after everything the Jewish people have been through.
Her successor will be selected on Tuesday by the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly. The contenders are Belgian Didier Reynders, the current European Commissioner for Justice, former Swiss president Alain Berset, and Estonian Indrek Saar, former Minister of Culture.
