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President Meloni’s speech at the fourth Council of Europe Summit

Tuesday, 16 May 2023

[The following video is available in Italian only]

Good afternoon everyone.

I wish to thank the Prime Minister and Government of Iceland for their hospitality, but above all for their determination in working to make this Council of Europe Summit, the idea for which was born in Turin at the closing meeting during the Italian Presidency, a reality. I of course also wish to greet the Secretary General, the Presidents and Prime Ministers in attendance and all of you.

18 years have passed since the last Council of Europe Summit, which is a long time but not as long as it seems if we look back at how much the context around us has changed since then.

Russia’s brutal aggression against Ukraine has called into question many of the certainties on which we had naively felt settled for too long. It is right that such a grave act be condemned right here, at the Council of Europe, the home of all Europeans that was established with the specific task of preventing a repeat of the atrocities of the Second World War, defending democracy and defending the law – the law of States without which we cannot defend people’s rights.

With their heroic reaction to the invasion, the Ukrainian people are not just defending their homeland, they are also defending the founding values of the European identity: freedom, democracy, justice, and equality between people. If Ukraine had capitulated, if it had done so in a matter of days as many thought would be the case, we would today be living in a much more uncertain world. We would not be living in peace, as we are told by certain propaganda that is so cynical as to pretend to confuse an invasion with the word ‘peace’; we would be living in a world where the strength of law is replaced by the law of the strongest, and such a world is not in anyone’s interest.

This is why I want to tell President Zelensky that the whole of Europe and the entire free world are in their debt. Also during this speech, President Zelensky said “thank you” very often, thanking us for how we are helping Ukraine. However, I want to say to President Zelensky that we are the ones in Ukraine’s debt, because Ukraine, with its determination, has made the whole world understand how difficult it can be to make a free people yield. 

This is why we will do our part to ensure Ukraine has the future of freedom, integrity and democracy it deserves, the European future it deserves. 

This is why, among other things, Italy immediately joined the agreement promoted by the Council of Europe to create a register of damage caused by the war, to ensure there is no impunity.

This is why I couldn’t not be here, to demonstrate Italy’s commitment to defend international law and to defend the founding values of our common European identity, starting with the fundamental principle from which all the others derive: the centrality of the individual, respect for every single human being and their sacred uniqueness. This is a value that we are today being called upon to protect on many fronts, against the age-old challenges of violence and oppression, but also against the new challenges of our time. Never before have science and technology moved so quickly. I am thinking of genetic engineering, artificial intelligence and bioethical issues; I am thinking of the risk we would be taking if we were to consider these domains as free zones without rules. The risk of progress no longer being aimed at strengthening and expanding human capabilities, but progress whereby human capabilities are replaced, substituted, in a world increasingly dominated by inequality and by power and wealth being concentrated in the hands of few. A world dominated by inequality is not a democratic world and, therefore, is not a European world.

Today more than ever we are called upon to reaffirm the need to defend human dignity in all contexts, because this is what Europe is about: a stronghold of values built over millennia, our real, unique, strength against the violence of tyrants, but also against the new dangers being faced by our societies.

In 1949, ten nations created the Council of Europe, among them Italy. That decision was borne from the conviction that protecting the fundamental values of freedom, democracy and human dignity was the basis for shared and peaceful prosperity in Europe. Today, there are 46 of us and we have come together here, in Reykjavík, to firmly state that our mission is now more relevant than ever. 

Thank you.

[Courtesy translation]