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Speech by Alain Berset, Secretary General of the Council of Europe
Dean Bojan Milisavljević,
Ambassador Lugon-Moulin,
Professor Bojana Čučković,
Members of the faculty and dear students,
It is a pleasure to be here today at the Faculty of Law of the University of Belgrade.
Meeting with students is one of the most meaningful parts of my work.
Vaš glas je važan
Your voice matters.
That is why I wanted to come here to listen and have this conversation with you.
I have been in this role for a year and a half, and I have made meeting with students a priority in every visit I make.
Every time, we return to the same question: what does it mean to be young in Europe today?
***
At Yerevan State University, the answer was clear: to come of age at a time when peace is within reach.
This visit was not long after Armenia and Azerbaijan announced a draft peace agreement, and the expectation in the room was tangible.
We were speaking about a conflict that has lasted more than thirty years.
Borders challenged, ceasefires broken, tens of thousands displaced.
For those students, it was all they knew.
But they are also part of the first generation of Armenians to grow up entirely inside the wider European family of the Council of Europe.
So for them, peace and Europe are inseparable ideas.
***
Peace was also very much on the mind of the students at the State University of Moldova in Chișinău.
For four years now, a war has been raging on their doorstep.
The Republic of Moldova shares the longest border with Ukraine of any European state.
It is also among the most exposed to disinformation.
For these students, the war is above all a hybrid war.
Lies and manipulation designed to divide and discredit democracy itself.
When I met them, they were coming out of a referendum about the country’s European future, decided by a margin of just over ten thousand votes.
And they were heading into critical parliamentary elections.
Disinformation affects young people across Europe.
It shapes what you see, what you believe, and who you trust.
***
For my last example, I take you to the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.
A few months before my visit, students mobilised over the university’s investments in companies operating in the occupied West Bank.
Like the protests in the wake of Novi Sad, they demanded accountability.
The two situations are not comparable in scale or gravity, but they touch the same nerve.
Young people asking institutions and leaders to answer for their actions.
That is democracy, plain and simple.
***
And it brings me to another point.
Less visible perhaps, but absolutely essential.
In parts of Europe where democracy has long been taken for granted, a growing number of young people question whether it still delivers.
Some even say they would prefer a strong leader who does not have to answer to parliament or voters.
What should that make us think?
And what does that tell us about Europe today?
***
This disillusionment among some young Europeans with democracy does not happen in a vacuum.
And it did not appear overnight.
Let me ask you a question.
Who here was born around the time of the 2008 financial crisis?
Raise your hand.
For me, that crisis marks the beginning of what I have called a perfect storm.
At the time, many of us thought it would pass.
But we were wrong.
The financial crisis fuelled rising inequality across Europe and the world.
Then came the COVID-19 pandemic, the climate crisis, the return of populism, and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
These are not separate shocks.
They are deep cracks in the architecture.
That is the perfect storm.
When you grow up in a world like that, imagining what 2030 or 2035 might look like becomes incredibly difficult.
***
Since then, the pace of crises has accelerated.
With Gaza, Venezuela, and Greenland.
They have all chipped away at the international legal order.
And now, the war in Iran is going one step further.
We cannot pretend anymore.
What we are witnessing is a phase of deconstruction of that order.
It is making it harder for young people everywhere to imagine their future.
When uncertainty becomes permanent, perspective is lost.
And when perspective is lost, institutions lose the trust they depend on.
***
The situation is not normal, and we must not get used to it.
The warning signs are all around us, from disinformation to extremism and populism.
Sometimes the very tools of democracy are turned against it, as rights are restricted and dissent discredited, all in the name of security.
So the question is this.
Do we want a Europe that grows stronger by protecting democracy at home and defending it abroad?
Or a Europe where democracy is slowly weakened from within, losing credibility in a world shaped by others?
That is the choice before us.
***
And that is why your voice matters.
Vaš glas je važan.
Freedom is like a muscle.
If we do not use it, it weakens.
The strength of our democracies will not be decided only in parliaments, courtrooms, or even on battlefields — inside or beyond our borders.
It will also be shaped in classrooms, online spaces, and in the minds of the next generation.
***
Moments like this rarely begin in institutions.
They often begin with students.
We have seen it here in Serbia.
And in many other moments when a generation decides it must speak.
***
So let me return to the question we started with.
What does it mean to be young in Europe in 2026?
It means living in uncertain times.
War on our continent and along our immediate borders.
Disinformation shaping our debates.
An international order that no longer holds as it once did.
***
But it also means belonging to a generation that asks questions.
Tough but necessary questions.
I saw it in Yerevan, in Chișinău, in Copenhagen.
And I see it here in Serbia.
Often the question is simple:
Are our institutions living up to their promises?
That question is not a threat to democracy.
It is its strength.
It is democracy.
And that is the conversation I hoped to have with you today.
Thank you.