75 years later, he said. Thus, Mr KOX concluded, multilateralism was the answer. Ms BRYNJÓLFSDÓTTIR said vibrant democracy was another answer related to multilateralism. She addressed Mr KOX in his role as the President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and with a long career as a parliamentarian. She mentioned that at the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna, Austria from 14 to 25 June 1993, after the fall of the Berlin wall and war in Yugoslavia, there was a concept in the outcome of that meeting called “democratic security”. Vibrant democracy could not be a puzzle when it came to security. She asked about the importance of the parliamentarians sitting in the room and their work. Mr KOX said behaving at home meant one was not a danger to the neighbours, which sounded simple, but it was unlike that in autocracies, and this was a system of democratic security. Democracies usually did not fight their neighbours. He agreed again with Ms GYLFADÓTTIR that democracy had been taken for granted from the 2nd and 3rd Summits, after the States had signed and ratified the conventions. Ms Fiona O’LOUGHLIN’s report, which combined all of the ideas of the Parliamentary Assembly, showed that democratic backsliding was now noticed. The report was looking for an answer. He was happy and proud, also thanks to the work a of the Icelandic presidency, that 10 principles of democracy would be formulated (also as Mr Bjorn BERGE had mentioned) over the next couple of days. The 46 Heads of State and Government were going to say they confirmed their commitment to those 10 principles, and be held accountable by national parliaments and the Parliamentary Assembly. It was a tremendous step forward, and they urged a reversal of the democratic backsliding. This gave parliamentarians a huge possibility. Ms BRYNJÓLFSDÓTTIR said Iceland had the oldest ongoing parliament since 1830, and it was a good place to do so. She turned to Ms Sylvie BERMANN, former Ambassador of France to Beijing, London, and Moscow, and the bigger picture of multilateralism. The Parliamentary Assembly had defined the aggression of Russia against Ukraine as the point of no return, she said. Was it also a point of no return for the international order and the system of global governance? Ms Sylvie BERMANN, former Ambassador of France to Beijing, London, and Moscow, said the thought that the return of a high-level intensity war on the continent was indeed a point of no return and above all a major strategic break, whereas earlier speakers had spoken of the dividends of war and had referred to Reykjavik and the meeting with Gorbachev as marking the beginning of the end of the Cold War. She recalled that she was in Moscow at that time, at the French Embassy, and that she was also there when the Council of Europe reinstated the Russian delegation after a number of difficulties. She recalled that Russia had to be expelled for a good reason, the in the face of this war of aggression. She continued by saying that, in her opinion, this was not a world war but a globalised war since it is a war that had consequences in the rest of the world. However, she added that although multilateralism had been effective in Europe and was effective in the Council of Europe, with a certain number of important decisions, including the Register of Damages that had been mentioned and that was open to other countries, as well as the possibility of using the Development Bank, this concern for the defence of democracy wad not shared by the rest of the world, and everyone knew it. She believed that the risk today was to have, as some say, the global West against the global East and, opposite, the global South. This was for her an essential problem which Europeans could not ignore. She recalled that the notion of exemplarity had been mentioned, which was essential, i.e. having a democracy and principles that work. She mentioned the war in Iraq. She continued by indicating that there was a very strong resentment in what was called the rest of the world, or the global South, which tended not to support Russia and the Russian aggression but to consider that this was an essentially European war and that European were not interested in the wars that were taking place in other regions of the world, such as in Sudan or in Yemen. Indeed, these wars were not every day in all the televisions of the world, reporting on what was happening in these regions. Thus, it would be essential for the future to have relations with these countries not based on lessons to be given in terms of democracy – which was a bit of a trend today – but on a true consideration of their interests and needs. Finally, she emphasised that this was the example that she believed would be much more influential that all the lessons of the Europeans, which were considered today as very arrogant. Ms BRYNJÓLFSDÓTTIR picked up on Ms BERMANN’s point that there were 70 ongoing conflicts around the world, but the war in Ukraine was a reminder of the impact on the lives of people living there, but also in the international arena, too, and the lives of people abroad. Ms BERMANN indicated that this was the case, since there had been consequences on energy supply, in Europe but not only, and above all risks of famine which had not been completely resolved, with the blockade

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