Parliamentary Assembly

Mr President, Mr Chairman of the Committee of Ministers, Mr Secretary General, members of the Assembly, ladies and gentlemen, allow me first of all, Mr President, to thank you most sincerely for your invitation. It is a great honour and a real pleasure to be with you today in Strasbourg.

Strasbourg, for so long a place and indeed an object of bloody conflict, has become a symbol of Franco-German reconciliation. Once peace returned, therefore, Strasbourg was well suited to be a meeting place, a place for contact and for reflection about the new Europe that was emerging. And so your Organisation, the Council of Europe, one of the oldest European institutions, the first intergovernmental one and the first ever to have given pride of place to a parliamentary body, quite naturally chose Strasbourg for its headquarters.

Thirty-eight years later, Strasbourg has been confirmed in its role as the parliamentary capital of the Europe of the Twelve as well as the Europe of the Twenty-one.

I am happy to greet the representatives of our twenty-one nations today, on behalf of the French Government, and to express to the Parliamentary Assembly whose President you are the consideration and esteem in which my country holds it. France is keenly interested in the work you do. Your ideas, your dynamism and your questing spirit set an example and give encouragement to all the governments of the Council of Europe’s member states.

The broad range of your activities, conducted in most of those areas where major problems are now arising to confront European societies, bears witness to the vitality of the Organisation, and at this point, I wish to pay tribute to the skill, the intelligence and the dynamism of the Secretary General, Mr Oreja. He knows that he can count on France’s contribution to maintaining that vital dialogue among our twenty-one nations.

The Council of Europe exists in order to work for greater unity in Europe, to improve living conditions, to develop human values and to defend the principles of parliamentary democracy and human rights.

Those spiritual and moral values we call liberty, pluralist democracy, the rule of law and dignity of the human person. You are indefatigable in their defence and fulfilment. In today’s troubled times, they require individual vigilance and collective unity. Those values are the foundations of our European societies, based on freedom and responsibility, to which, together, we remain deeply attached.

That is a measure of the vital nature of the mission assigned to the Council of Europe which, according to the Colombo report is “the forum giving broadest expression to the essential solidarity among democratic European states attached to fundamental freedoms and human rights”.

The fact that democratic Europe possesses multiple institutions is a fortunate asset in the cause of European unification. It enables functions to be shared in pursuit of one and the same goal: to make Europe a powerhouse and ensure its place on the world stage, in keeping with the values of a civilisation determined to serve the cause of peace, freedom and human happiness.

So there must be no sterile atmosphere of competition between the European institutions, no crisis of identity within the organisations. The work of each one of them must be guided solely by a concern for efficiency and complementarity – which by no means excludes emulation – for the sake of a grand design, the unification of Europe.

In order to move forward while safeguarding what has been achieved, in order to help build up the edifice which we believe to be essential while at the same time consolidating its foundations, ambition and pragmatism, which dominated the thinking of Robert Schuman and General de Gaulle, will continue to inspire the French Government in defining a European policy that is active and imaginative, generous and realistic. And my Government intends to mobilise all possible energies within the framework of the existing institutions.

The building of Europe, of which the Council of Europe was of course one of the pioneers, is more necessary now than ever it was. It is a force for peace between nations and a framework for prosperity, it has become a crucial requirement in overcoming the crisis, in enabling our old and beloved continent to return to its rightful place on the international scene and exert a growing influence on the decisions by which its future will be conditioned, also to serve as an example of humanity for the rest of the world, which is its central purpose.

The European Economic Community plays a central role in the economic field. That is its true purpose. Against a background of crisis, the recovery of our various countries requires us to develop a homogeneous economic area. The dynamic nature of the Community despite its difficulties and its recent developments promise well for the future. France welcomes the progress that has been accomplished slowly but surely (perhaps the best way). The Government has ratified the Single European Act which gives formal expression to a number of changes in the Community, while respecting the balance of the institutions and that of national sovereignties. It also constitutes a necessary stage, within an enlarged Community, towards facing the challenges of the year 2000. France has high hopes of the internal market whose completion, thirty- five years after the Treaty of Rome was signed, should have a powerful effect in boosting our economies just as the abolition of customs barriers in the 1960s did by enabling sustained growth to be pursued for a decade or so. In addition France gives priority to greater co-operation in the monetary field and wishes to see social and tax laws harmonised. Lastly, France considers it vital that we should develop a Europe of research, technology and space, whether it be in the framework of such Community programmes as Esprit or Race or within other structures such as the European Space Agency, Airbus or Eureka, to mention only a few.

Accordingly, the French Government is planning to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome with great ceremony. It will involve the country’s young people in these celebrations in order to bring home to them the idea of European unification, a day-to-day reality and a hope for the future, but mainly an inevitable process if we are to shoulder our responsibilities.

The progressive nature of the European Community has caused it to enlarge its sphere of action. The French view is that this should not detract from the Council of Europe. The Council of Europe pursues wider goals than those of the European Economic Community, but their work remains complementary and indeed inseparable.

Frequently the Council of Europe appears as a forerunner, as a torch-bearer, showing the Community the way ahead. Intergovernmental co-operation among the Twenty-one then throws the door open to Community action in greater depth. One field in which this has happened is the environment: you were the first to draw the attention of governments to the importance of ecological issues which they had not fully grasped and the vital need for international co-operation in this field; and the facts have proved us right.

You operate as an alarm signal, alerting Europe’s conscience to major social issues, whether it be terrorism, violence, drugs or the protection of individuals in relation to technological advance.

In addition, the political dialogue that is proceeding among our twenty-one Council of Europe states boosts, fuels and strengthens political co-operation among the Twelve.

In this way the two institutions are playing their part in the same historical process of building a united Europe. Each one, applying its own methods and its own resources, is helping to advance unity among the states and the peoples of Europe. The Council of Europe offers European states, whether or not they are members of the EEC, a broad framework for multilateral co-operation and participation in this process, rooted in common ideals and respect for individual sovereignty.

Defending the values we share in common means, first and foremost, strengthening our solidarity with regard to external security, since the world is divided into blocs, and also with regard to internal security, faced as we are with the challenge of terrorism which is seeking to destabilise our democratic systems.

Although this question lies within the remit of another Assembly which I addressed recently, I cannot refrain from mentioning here today the problem of Europe’s defence, which is a matter of prime concern to us. Too often, Western Europe tends to appear as a mere pawn in a struggle of forces beyond its control. That is an unacceptable situation for all those who, like us, are determined to work to assert Europe’s identity. For what would that united Europe signify if we denied it the means to be strong, free, independent and respectful of individual differences?

That, Mr President, is what France says in every quarter, West and East alike. And I should like to remind those countries of that other Europe which are cut off from us by the ties of alliances and by the nature of their different regimes that they are our brothers in culture, history and tradition and have, as we know, the same ambitions as ourselves when it comes to defending the values of human dignity.

France does not intend to resign itself to the status quo, with Europe arbitrarily and unjustly cut in two, its peoples divided and its families separated from each other.

My own country played an important part in preparing the Helsinki Final Act. We did so because we thought it vital to try to cut through the rigid differences in Europe by a process of dialogue and co-operation among all European states. It was a difficult task, and there were many setbacks. But could we stand helplessly by when what was at stake was the determination to secure to every nation in Europe a future of peace and liberty? That was what prompted me, when I was Prime Minister, to give France’s agreement to that process following talks with the Soviet authorities.

Just as it did in Helsinki, the French Government will continue at Vienna to advocate co-operation. We shall favour contact on an increasing scale, convinced as we are that co-operation must one day win the day over confrontation, and aware of that small beacon that Europe represents to many people living in Eastern Europe, that beacon called freedom to which most of them aspire.

I recall the poignant testimony of that great writer, Milan Kundera, referring to the last telegram from the representative of a press agency in Prague who, about to be crushed by a Soviet tank, said: “I am fighting for my country, I am fighting for Europe”. That was his last message. We must never forget it.

Ladies and gentlemen, I know what ardour and what faith inspire you in the protection and promotion of human rights, in accordance with the particular thrust of the Council of Europe’s work. Some of you are nationals of member states of the Atlantic Alliance, others of the European Free Trade Association or of neutral and non-aligned states, and you all subscribe to the principles enshrined in the Final Act of Helsinki. You doubtless noted the recognition in that instrument that change is inevitable and legitimate in Europe and that individuals, like states, must play their part in it.

You will therefore agree on the paramount importance that attaches to the scrutiny which the Vienna conference will be conducting in the months ahead of the manner in which that Final Act has been applied.

For its part, France observes that human rights are still being violated in our continent. Notwithstanding a number of spectacular gestures in recent times, it cannot forget the thousands of other cases, all those people who constantly and courageously keep the hope of liberty alive. It cannot remain silent in the face of the obstacles ceaselessly placed in the way of freedom of thought, conscience, religion and belief.

Lastly, how can the affinities that exist among our nations be fostered unless free access to information, the free movement of cultural assets and freedom to exchange ideas are safeguarded?

In what has come to be called the “human dimension” of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe, we believe the time is ripe for further advance. We should like the thirty-five states to indicate rapidly and unambiguously their collective interest in settling the many cases for which our various countries are having every year to seek solutions in the framework of bilateral relations. Freedom of movement, the development of telephone communications, reunification of families, contacts between young people and cultural exchanges are just a few examples of the many fields in which we earnestly desire to see tangible improvements in the relations between Western and Eastern Europe.

For a quarter of a century, French policy towards Eastern Europe has been consistent. France does not intend to deal with other countries as belonging to this or that bloc, or to confine the relations it wishes to maintain with other states simply to security aspects – though their importance cannot be underestimated, especially with the prospect of possible negotiations on conventional imbalances from the Atlantic to the Urals.

It lays just as much store by what can be accomplished between communities and individuals. I know that the Council of Europe, to whom we owe the first real effort to protect human rights internationally, and your Assembly, are very much at one with French thinking on this matter.

Any discussion of security problems today, alas, inevitably means talking about terrorism. I must therefore mention this new form of war without frontiers, waged without pity or discrimination against our citizens, innocent victims of a faceless enemy defying human rights and threatening the very existence of our democracies. In fighting this scourge, this leprosy of modern times, the Council of Europe also has a specific part to play, in accordance with its statutory function and within its sphere of competence, particularly in the field of law and standard-setting instruments. France is convinced that everything must be done to eradicate this evil and will be unstinting in its efforts, and in its support for the Council of Europe in whatever it undertakes to that end. Accordingly, as you know, the French Government has decided to ratify the European Convention on the Suppression of Terrorism, which was signed in Strasbourg on 22 January 1977. The ratification bill is to be laid before the French Parliament at the spring session. In order to safeguard the right of asylum and the principles of our extradition law which are secured under the French Constitution, the ratification will be accompanied by a reservation clause similar to that which many other states have entered under Article 13 of the convention.

Likewise, France welcomed the highly positive results of the European Conference of Ministers responsible for Combating Terrorism which took place in Strasbourg last November. The resolutions passed, which are to be implemented by a group of the ministers’ closest advisers, are such as to strengthen the necessary, not to say crucial, co-operation between the member states.

I should like to pay tribute to our peoples when they have been victims of terrorism. Terrorism has sought to disfigure our countries, but it has not succeeded. Our democratic systems, respectful of the law and of the human person, must have the strength and authority, individually and by pooling their efforts, to wage a veritable war on terrorism, and this they are able to do. Let me take this opportunity of thanking our European partners for the understanding they have shown in particularly cruel circumstances. I am aware of the difficulties which the exceptional measures taken by the French Government may initially have caused in some of our countries, and let me assure you that they were not taken lightheartedly.

France found itself having to respond to the threat by taking energetic steps to fight this evil more effectively. Extending the visa requirement seemed indispensable, but in order to be fully effective that measure had to be applied as generally as possible. Consequently, it was decided that the visa requirement would be imposed on all states except those of the Community and Switzerland, by reason of its position as a neighbour of France. But, contrary to our countries’ traditions – and despite the serious consequences of this measure – it was not possible to exempt the other countries of Europe from this obligation, any more than those states with which we have ongoing relations of great importance to us, and in particular the African states both north and south of the Sahara. These states are affected far more than any others by this arrangement, which has drawbacks for them out of all proportion to the inconvenience caused to others, and I want to pay tribute to their understanding and approval of that decision.

For the other member states of the Council of Europe which it was not possible to exempt from that measure, in order to maintain consistency in the French decision to make the visa requirement general, instructions were immediately given to our consulates for the time taken to issue visas to be reduced to a minimum and, thanks to the additional staff resources which have been made available, the waiting time now is in the region of twenty-four hours. Wide use is also being made of the so-called visa de circulation (transit visa) which enables its holder to enter and leave France as often as he wishes.

Furthermore, all members of the Parliamentary Assembly continue to be authorised to move within French territory simply on the strength of the identity card issued to them by the Secretariat of the Council. That arrangement is to be extended, because I am told it is necessary, to the ministers, the judges and all those who are normally called upon to work with and for the Council of Europe.

The government hopes that the inconvenience arising from its decision to make the entry visa into France a general requirement has thus been reduced to the bare minimum.

In part, terrorism has its roots in the tragic situation in Lebanon – as everyone knows and understands. It stems from a number of groups who would like to chase the Western states out of Lebanon. And on the cultural and historical levels, France is a particular target of terrorism because it is not simply a “physical” presence there as other countries are: France is not just “present” in Lebanon, it is “present in the hearts of the Lebanese people”, and that is something which certain people find intolerable, among them those whose methods we denounce and condemn.

That is why we are forced to be especially vigilant – more so than others – in the matter of terrorism, whether it be “imported” terrorism or hostage-taking.

I beg each and every one of you to understand these crucial reasons and to agree that they are worth putting up with some minor inconvenience here or there, for the sake of that solidarity which must unite all our countries at a time when a real menace hangs over us, threatening the lives of innocent people and their loved ones.

The anti-terrorist effort that has been embarked upon will bear fruit only if our countries remain united in support of each other, as they have been at every testing time throughout their history. In the present circumstances, what we have to defend is the honour and the strength of our democracies, and I hope that everyone is aware of what is fundamentally at stake.

There is no true freedom without security. This war against terrorism in which the Council of Europe is actively involved through its work is a perfect illustration of the Organisation’s central purpose: to act as the untiring champion of a Europe of freedom.

Is there a finer mission than giving expression to what is historically the very strength of our common civilisation?

The size of the task that has been accomplished, and the ambitious scale of current or planned projects, show that the Council of Europe is bringing to the European edifice that additional spiritual dimension which is necessary to the venture.

Through the legal instruments which it has created – I am thinking of course of the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Social Charter – the Council of Europe has become a yardstick for the whole world in the so essential sphere of human rights and a hope for hundreds and thousands of men and women.

The principal responsibility of the Council of Europe, that forum of the parliamentary democracies, is to help preserve and consolidate the democratic area in Europe.

As a product of “European humanism”, the Council of Europe is the watchdog of our common values, highest among which I would set respect for human dignity and freedom. These assets are precarious and constantly under threat, yet they are essential to human happiness. Charles Péguy said that “freedom is a system of courage”. The courage of your Organisation is this perseverance over the years in setting out a precise legal framework for that fundamental aspiration of our European peoples.

In accomplishing that task, you can count on the unfailing support of France: it will always be present, ready and willing to extend the protection of human rights further and further. Everyone knows that France – which we never tire of hearing described as the cradle of human rights – is synonymous with hope for a multitude of oppressed people: France will be ever- ready to defend them if any single one of them is threatened, as alas is so often the case.

Two centuries after the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen in 1789, France carries a heritage of which it is proud and for which it will always preach with missionary zeal. That heritage can be summed up as the defence of the individual’s civil and political rights, a guarantee of physical integrity, and respect for the economic, social and cultural rights of man.

At the end of the eighteenth century, when intolerance held sway, France put forward happiness as a new idea in Europe; at the end of the twentieth century it has no intention of slackening its efforts and is still as desirous as ever of contributing to the fulfilment and dignity of the human person: the fact is that nothing achieved in the human rights field can ever be taken for granted. That is an assertion which everyone here knows and understands, and it is a very strong bond between our countries, our peoples and their representatives. That is the essential thing, and that is what is at stake between us. It is what justifies the importance and dynamism of your Organisation.

The Council of Europe, for whom as I see it the European Convention on Human Rights remains the essential achievement, is in the forefront. It was in 1950 that it produced that open-ended, multinational legal instrument, to which further protocols have been added to take account of social and technological changes and to cover new threats to public liberties. The Council of Europe is, for instance, concerned about the implications of technical and medical advances for the exercise of fundamental rights. France is an active contributor to this work: it has ratified the Convention for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data. It is fully committed to the examination of artificial procreation. In a similar vein, the Council of Europe’s adoption in 1961 of the European Social Charter took the building of a Europe based on freedoms a stage further by extending its scope as much as possible to economic and social rights.

France has ratified most of the conventions drawn up by the Council of Europe and other international organisations alike and prides itself on compliance with them. It has recognised the right of individual petition to the European Commission of Human Rights.

It hopes that the Council of Europe, faithful to its mission and tradition, will persuade all member states to sign the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

This is a text which France supports.

France is active in bodies responsible for devising ways of enhancing legal and judicial co-operation between member states with a view to harmonising national legislation and preparing new international legal instruments.

This is something in which the Council of Europe, and your Assembly in particular, have played an exemplary, irreplaceable role and one which I would like to see enlarged.

You may count on the help and support of France, which will spare neither physical nor intellectual effort to ensure progress with the work in hand. I am thinking in particular of criminal proceedings, piracy in the field of copyright, illegal migration and mutual recognition of criminal judgments.

In the field of human rights, symbols are often of greater significance than binding texts. In 1989, the Council of Europe will be celebrating its 40th anniversary and France the bicentenary of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. This happy coincidence should be a unique opportunity for celebrating human rights with the inauguration of a prestigious new Human Rights building for the Council of Europe. The French Government has announced that it will make a special contribution to the cost. The City of Strasbourg is making a gift of the land. I have given instructions to my departments that the work is to be expedited and the completion date respected.

Human rights and social problems are closely related and often overlap. This is understandable, because all relate to people’s living conditions. It is therefore natural that you should also tackle social problems.

In their different ways they are concerned with our children’s future and the betterment of their welfare. It is up to us, by pooling our ideas and resources, to provide for and improve the living conditions of Europe’s future generations.

In the French Government’s view, two issues deserve special attention. In some instances, fresh impetus even needs to be given to the work in hand: public health, on the one hand, and education, culture and communication, on the other.

The Council of Europe’s record in the social field is both praiseworthy and remarkably positive: the European Social Charter, the European Code of Social Security, the status of migrant workers, undocumented migration, aid to refugees and to the victims of natural disasters, and combating poverty.

What a record! Yet I find that it is sometimes not known about in our countries, perhaps indeed less than elsewhere in the world which pays closer attention to the considerable efforts made by the Council of Europe in the sensitive areas I have just mentioned.

High priorities among social affairs are public health and family questions, particularly in view of the threats to our societies. These threats we can cope with by combining our energies, experience and resources. The Council of Europe is an ideal forum for this.

One of the principal causes of anxiety in the health field is drugs. National frontiers are nowhere an obstacle to their spread.

Drug dependence has health, cultural and social dimensions which only multidisciplinary studies and concerted international action can control. I am delighted that the Co-operation Group to Combat Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking in Drugs, known after its founder as the Pompidou Group, was put under the Council of Europe umbrella in 1980. We need to take further the discussions initiated under its aegis relating both to the suppression of illicit trafficking as a means of combating the drug problem and to prevention and the treatment of addicts.

Co-operation must be reinforced. Our societies cannot remain inert in the face of this scourge. We must do our utmost and more to save Europe’s young people from this form of alienation and slavery.

France plays an active part in the Pompidou Group’s work, which should not be confined to the pooling of information but should now move into a higher gear, within the Council of Europe framework and in conjunction with the United Nations, and devise the legal rules and international instruments currently lacking.

France would also like the see the fight against cancer and AIDS intensified. Here too the Council of Europe can make a significant contribution and provide an ideal forum for pooling information and knowledge about prevention, screening and even treatment. The French Government is currently embarking on major programmes and making very considerable resources available for bringing these evils under control. Of course it is not the only country in Europe to be doing so. Other countries are similarly engaged. But the scale of the resources needed to make positive progress and the gravity of the situation warrant, and indeed require, better co-ordination of our research and the means we employ to fight these diseases.

Council of Europe ministerial meetings are to take place in June, in Brussels, on family affairs another field that is vital to the very structures of our society and our civilisation, and in November, in Paris, on health questions. I hope most sincerely that these meetings, to which the French representatives will of course bring their best endeavours, will be as fruitful as possible. In these areas too, the Council of Europe must remain the spearhead for the expression of realistic ideas and owes it to itself to set its customary example.

Education and culture are inseparable from the defence of human rights. It is no accident that the year when the European Convention on Human Rights was signed was the year when a committee of experts to consider ways of giving the new Europe a cultural framework held its first meeting in Strasbourg.

Education and culture are indeed inseparable from the defence of human rights: it is in schools that education is first provided in such rights, which are the very heart of independent instruction and artistic creation.

It must be remembered in this connection that schools are the ideal place for learning about human rights and preparing for life in a democratic pluralist society. Human rights are part and parcel of our history, of our heritage, and it is the task of schools to inculcate an appreciation, understanding and knowledge of that heritage, to fix it firmly in the hearts and minds of our children. Indeed, education itself is a human right.

This vital aspect was affirmed in the 1978 Resolution on the teaching of human rights and embodied in the Recommendation of 14 May 1985 on teaching and learning about human rights in schools, which the French Government has made a point of sending to all headteachers.

As early as 1976, the Council of Europe devoted a sector of its work-programme to education and information in the field of human rights: the development of research by the institution of a system of fellowships, the promotion of human rights education in the context of vocational training and school education, and the introduction of a European dimension in education by means such as the promotion of modern language teaching.

The Council of Europe, faithful to its principles, has created a body unique in Europe, a standing conference of representatives of governments and institutions of higher education, the thrust of whose action associates the defence of freedom of thought and expression with the greatest advances in scientific research and new technology. I salute these initiatives, these think-tanks in the service of European humanism and cultural democracy.

In the field of culture, France has always accorded the Council of Europe a leading role as a suitable forum for co-ordinating and harmonising cultural policies in Europe. Thus, there was European Youth Year.

In that same spirit I should like today to salute and encourage the initiative recently taken by a number of this Parliamentary Assembly’s members, to organise a series of colloquies to study and underline the symbiosis of the Jewish and European cultures. You are concerned, and rightly so, to highlight a fundamental aspect of our common heritage, and it is vital that we should be aware of it.

In so doing you are also underscoring the quite simple but essential idea that a civilisation’s wealth – and this is true first and foremost of our own European civilisation – has always been based, and always will be based, on the plurality of approaches and the diversity of cultures which our continent possesses.

You set an equally splendid example in the field of communication.

The success achieved by the ministerial conference in Vienna last December on the subject of audiovisual communication must be followed up. It proved the Council’s ability to tackle these issues. The resolutions adopted, on the basis of a French report on the promotion of audiovisual works in Europe and a Swedish report on public and private broadcasting in Europe, pointed the way. The ministers instructed the Council of Europe to draw up binding legal instruments in the field of transfrontier broadcasting. A date has been set: the ministers are to meet in Stockholm at the end of 1988.

France, which is already involved in many projects whose European dimension is becoming daily clearer, sets great store by the creation of a European audiovisual communications area. Waves and beams are no respectors of frontiers. Europe’s organisation of such an area gives its co-operation a new dimension and is also vital for the protection of its cultural heritage and common values. Europe must develop the most advanced broadcasting technologies. It is also absolutely essential that it exercise its talents and affirm its personality in the field of programmes and pictures, through which the progress of a culture is apparent. It will then be able to compete on an equal footing with the United States and Japan. I hope that, under your aegis, the work may proceed as intensively and constructively as possible.

I cannot conclude without mentioning two further important questions.

Our countries are confronted with a difficult and increasingly acute problem on which the Council of Europe has already organised useful exchanges of views, namely the massive influx of asylum-seekers who, more often than not, are prompted by economic motives. To reduce the risk of a sharp decline in the hospitality afforded by our societies, there is, I think, a need for closer consultation on the problem with a view to reaching the European solution it demands.

Lastly, the appropriate Council of Europe bodies have responded to the requests of local and regional government representatives and are preparing a European Campaign for the Countryside, the organising committee for which is chaired by Mr Edgar Faure.

The French Government shares the concern of the project’s instigators to promote the development of rural regions while maintaining continuity and preserving those regions’ qualities for future generations. It is essential to give serious consideration to what is at stake and to involve as wide a cross-section as possible of people, officials and operators concerned by the future of the countryside in Europe.

Mr President, before concluding I would like to express a hope: that the Council of Europe will continue along its appointed path in furtherance of its foremost mission, namely to bring about a Europe of freedoms and at the same time safeguard our common values: what constitutes our civilisation, what unites us deep down and which is infinitely more vital than the things that may divide us and which more and more, in view of the challenges that face us, seem derisory today and will seem even more derisory tomorrow.

The Council of Europe may count on France’s confidence and co-operation in the pursuit of an objective which is as exciting as it is demanding.

I shall leave the last word with Albert Camus, who, referring to that objective, said that freedom is in chains as long as a single human being remains enslaved.