Presidency of the Republic of Moldova
Secretary General Alain Berset,
Ministers,
Distinguished guests,
Welcome to Chișinău.
It is an honour to open this session here, in Moldova's capital. Moldova is a country that spent many years looking towards Europe — for guidance, for belonging. Today, Europe meets here. In our home.
Holding the Presidency of the Committee of Ministers has been a responsibility we took seriously. For six months, we worked to chair with purpose and contribute to decisions that matter — for our member states, for our citizens, and for the values the Council of Europe exists to defend.
Today we hand the Presidency to Monaco. But before we do, I want to reflect on why we are here and what we are being asked to do together.
The Council of Europe was founded in 1949. Europe was still in ruins — not only buildings, but trust, dignity, institutions. The founders understood something history had just written in blood: peace is not simply the absence of war. It must be built, maintained, and protected.
They chose three foundations — human rights, democracy, and the rule of law — not as ideals, but as systems of protection. This Organisation was therefore never meant to be a comfort zone. It was meant to be a line of defence.
For the decades that followed, it worked in parallel with other institutions being built at the same time. NATO provided collective defence. The project that later became the European Union built economic integration and, ultimately, political union. The Council of Europe provided the democratic and legal foundations — the standards, the court, the accountability mechanisms.
All these were a single architecture, constructed through different instruments. As a result, countries that had known dictatorship became stable democracies, enemies became partners, and a continent repeatedly torn apart by war found a durable peace.
That achievement is under threat today. And the nature of that threat was made very clear yesterday.
Russia launched one of the longest and most massive drone attacks on Ukraine since this war began. One thousand five hundred and sixty drones. Civilians were killed. Energy infrastructure was struck. Moldova's own airspace was violated. Russia is not seeking to end this war. Russia is continuing its killing spree.
Let us be clear about what we are witnessing. Russia is a state that sends drones against sleeping civilians, that targets hospitals, schools, and power stations with deliberate, systematic intent.
Russia is an aggressor. Russia is the most pressing and severe security threat to our continent today and probably for decades to come. The pressure on Russia must not let up.
Meanwhile, what Ukraine has accomplished in defending its people and its territory is remarkable — and it has rewritten the doctrine of modern defence.
Ukrainian soldiers and engineers have developed capabilities now studied across Europe and beyond. Ukraine has become, in the most concrete sense, a security provider for this continent. Such an achievement deserves consistent, unwavering support. Maximum support for the country defending European values; maximum pressure on the aggressor attacking them.
Sustaining that pressure requires more than military and financial support. It requires accountability. Peace without accountability will not hold. Impunity is not a neutral outcome. It is an invitation.
That is why it was so important for Moldova to be a founding member of the Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine, established within the Council of Europe framework. Accountability has been at the heart of our Presidency — through the Register of Damage, the International Claims Commission for Ukraine, and the Tribunal itself.
Today, here in Chișinău, the Enlarged Partial Agreement on the Management Committee of the Special Tribunal is to be formally adopted, moving it from political commitment to operational institution. Many member states have expressed interest in joining. I encourage every remaining member to do the same. It is a legal and political act that tells every aggressor — today and tomorrow — the rules still apply. The court will sit. Justice will come.
Ladies and gentlemen,
The battlefield is only one front. While this physical war continues, Russia is simultaneously waging a second one — less visible, but equally designed to destroy.
It is a hybrid war. A cognitive war. A war waged inside our societies against the way people think, what they trust, how they vote. These two wars are not separate. They serve the same objective: to divide, weaken, and ultimately control Europe. One uses drones and missiles. The other uses illegal money, manipulation, and manufactured narratives. One destroys cities. The other destroys the trust on which free societies depend.
Moldova has been on the frontline of this second war for years — facing energy blackmail, electoral interference, information warfare, and malign cyber operations, all aimed at a single goal: to pull us away from Europe.
We resisted. But the threat has not passed. What we experienced in Moldova was not an isolated case. It was a blueprint. The same methods are now being applied across our continent — adapted, scaled, refined — working under the disguise of democratic freedoms.
This is what makes the cognitive war so insidious. It does not come as an obvious attack. It arrives dressed in the language of rights and freedoms. Authoritarian regimes that suppress freedom of expression at home weaponise those same freedoms abroad — turning them against the very societies that protect them.
Let us be clear: freedom of expression is for individuals, not for fake accounts or armies of bots. Freedom of assembly is not for paid protests orchestrated on Telegram. Freedom of association is not for Kremlin-funded proxy parties.
To understand why this matters so deeply, we must remember what our values are and where they came from. Our European values did not emerge from comfort. They are a direct response to what Europe witnessed and endured — to nazism, to mass killing, to the systematic destruction of human dignity. European democracy consolidated as a conscious, deliberate choice to build the opposite of what had just been allowed to happen.
In the West, 1945 was liberation — and what followed was decades of building: prosperity, open societies, citizens who became masters of their own destiny. In the East, where the European project did not reach, dictatorship filled the space. Where integration did not arrive, fear and isolation did. The presence of Europe meant democracy. Its absence meant the opposite.
The threat to that hard-won achievement has not disappeared. It has changed shape. The Council of Europe was built to fight authoritarianism. That mission has not changed — but today's authoritarianism does not only grow from within. It is exported. It targets not only our institutions and our elections. It targets our way of life — the open, pluralist, rights-based societies that Europeans have built together and that define who we are.
Our existing tools to defend ourselves, our democracies, our way of life, were built for a different environment. They do not move at the speed of AI-generated disinformation, coordinated foreign interference, or cryptocurrency-funded proxy parties. We need to update the toolkit. And we need to do it now.
Secretary General Berset's call for a New Democratic Pact for Europe is right. Democracies cannot defend themselves with the methods of decades ago — and they must not abandon democratic principles in doing so. What we need is a new acquis for democracy defence: one that protects open societies from external attack without closing them from within.
That means a legal instrument on countering foreign information manipulation and interference. Soft law and recommendations cannot provide the stable basis that sustained international cooperation requires. A convention would establish shared principles, close the legal gaps that FIMI operations deliberately exploit, and structure cooperation between states — while ensuring every measure taken remains consistent with human rights and the rule of law. And because the threat does not stop at Europe's borders, such a convention should be open to like-minded partners beyond them.
Distinguished audience,
The most effective response to those who seek to destabilise our democracies is to leave them fewer targets. Every democracy that remains outside the European family is a vulnerability that destructive forces will exploit.
The lesson of the aftermath of the Second World War holds today as it did then: where the European project reached, democracy took root. Where it did not, darkness filled the space. Where it stops short today, grey zones appear — and in grey zones, others decide your fate.
Enlargement has been the European Union's most powerful act of statecraft. Every wave extended the area of peace and stability further across the continent — taking countries emerging from fascism, dictatorship, and communism, and giving them the framework to consolidate and grow. None of them were complete democracies when they joined. The Union did not wait for perfection. It offered belonging, and belonging did the work.
That same offer must be extended today — to Ukraine, to the Western Balkans, and to Moldova. Not as a favour, but as a strategic choice. Supporting enlargement and defending European democratic life are, in the end, the same act of resistance.
Moldova and Ukraine have earned their place — by choosing Europe under very difficult conditions and defending that choice.
We are not asking for shortcuts. We respect the merit-based process — and we are doing the work. But we do ask that merit be recognised and rewarded.
Because for us, accession is existential. And for Europe, it is an investment in its own security.
Dear friends,
Defending Europe requires military strength and strong alliances. But it also requires defending what Europe is — the open societies, the rule of law, the democratic way of life that generations built in response to a catastrophic war. Just as modern defence has been revolutionised by new technologies, so the toolkit for defending democracies must be updated.
Moldova has learned this the hard way. We know what is at stake. We have seen what works. Keep the pressure on Russia and the support for Ukraine unwavering. Build the legal instruments to defend our democracies from cognitive warfare. And extend the European family to those who have already proven they belong in it.
The responsibility is shared by all of us. And Moldova is ready to carry it — as a member state, as a reliable partner, and as a country that believes, with every fibre of its experience, that the European project is worth building and worth defending.
Thank you.
