Plenary Session, Athens, 24 November 2023
Zappeion Megaron
Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe
The voice of European Lawyers
Guest Speaker: Evangelos Venizelos*
The voice of European lawyers is heard in Athens during an especially pivotal moment for the world. Obviously, our attention is centered on the two hotbeds of war that are near us, in the Middle East and in Ukraine. However, this period holds critical significance for the West, for Europe and for European political and legal culture.
War has consistently posed a severe challenge to the foundations of law. The law of war, both jus ad bellum and jus in bello, is a deeply contradictory concept. It tries to submit to legal regulations and limit extreme forms of violence. The balance between the right to self-defense, the right to security, the fight against terrorism, the protection of national sovereignty and the territorial integrity of the state on the one hand and the protection of human rights, especially the right to life, the protection of civilians and civic infrastructures on the other hand, consistently confronts us with profound political, ethical, and historical dilemmas. But these are usually discussed post facto, after events have unfolded and situations have crystallized.
Presently, we find ourselves in a phase marked by the utter embarrassment and functional paralysis of the UN. The Security Council, the main body responsible for keeping the peace, taking measures and imposing sanctions, is practically unable to function after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This is now evident in the Middle East in the aftermath of the brutal terrorist attack of October 7th and the subsequent justified response. However, it is crucial that this reaction adheres to the principles of proportionality and the rules of humanitarian law.
Fundamental values, which we in the West, and particularly in Europe, regard as universal and self-evident – such as the rule of law and human rights constituting the essence of liberal democracy – apply, in practice, in a small part of the planet and cover a small percentage of the world's population.
In the very interior of the West, American democracy is undergoing a challenge marked by political, moral and social division that is sharpening on the way to the presidential elections next November and is tending to take on the characteristics of a quasi-civil war. However, not only American foreign policy depends on the results of the American presidential elections, but the very strategic status of the West. This directly concerns Europe and its security, the European foreign policy and security and defense policy. With direct economic, social and political implications starting from the cost and adequacy of energy resources and the functionality of global supply chains, and even influencing the electoral behaviors of European citizens. These dynamics reach to the core of European liberal democracy, which often appears phobic about electoral outcomes because European liberal democracy is not only electoral but it is the combination of electoral democracy and majority principle with a commitment to human rights, the rule of law and its guarantees. Such fundamental guarantees are the separation of powers, the independence of justice, the right to a fair trial, legal certainty.
The West as a historical acquis and as a strategic entity in the modern world and in its context Europe as a continent of liberal democracy, presupposes respect for the European constitutional heritage. All the battles for European integration have historical meaning only when they are battles for the protection of the acquis of liberal, i.e. constitutional, democracy.
The protection of the internal institutional status in Europe stands as the primary strategic imperative for its security and strengthening its role also in the field of international politics. No geopolitical consideration can ignore, question or much more reduce the importance of the acquis of liberal democracy, and particularly the rule of law.
However, the rule of law, separation of powers, independence of justice, legal certainty, and fair trial cannot exist without safeguarding the position of the lawyer. The lawyer is a genetic component of liberal democracy and European institutional identity. The lawyer has a duty to defend the liberal democracy and the liberal democracy in the form of national, European and international legislator but also in the form of the judiciary at all levels has a duty to defend the lawyer because without the lawyer it is not constituted as a comprehensive institutional guarantee.
This concerns all aspects of the lawyer's activity in the fields of international, European and national law, in the fields of private, public and criminal law, but mainly the lawyer as a defender of both classical and post-modern human rights - ranging from the right to life and the prohibition of torture to protection against the challenges posed by the climate crisis and the risks associated with artificial intelligence. In a landscape where nothing is self-evident, nothing is unnecessary banality. For this reason, the Council of Europe, as an institutional guarantor of the values of wider Europe, always has as its priority the legal position of the lawyer.
I have dedicated several years of my political and academic journey to the Council of Europe, serving as a member of the Committee of Ministers, and as a rapporteur of the Parliamentary Assembly for the implementation of the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights. Two years ago, and ahead of the Reykjavik Summit, the Secretary General honored me by appointing me a member of the seven-member High Level Reflection Group on the future of the Council of Europe, and the Group honored me by electing me as the rapporteur of the report it has already been submitted. Therefore, I think that I can refer to the Council of Europe with both respect and firsthand knowledge.
We perceive the Council of Europe always and primarily as the guardian of the European rule of law, of the European liberal democracy. The jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights has elaborated and highlighted the lawyer as a particularly sensitive subject of the rights protected by the Convention and its Protocols, starting with the right to the protection of professional confidentiality and communication with client. In the rule of law checklist prepared by the Venice Commission, adopted by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and finally incorporated jurisprudentially by the Court of Justice of the EU into the primary law, the independence ant impartiality of the bar is provided as an integral element of the rule of law.
On this ground, the completion of the processing and the adoption by the Council of Europe of a coherent international legal instrument on the legal position of the lawyer in the form of a multilateral international convention open for signature also in countries outside the Council of Europe, should stand as a pan-European political and institutional priority, a measure of self-protection of the European rule of law, of which the lawyer is a minister and guarantor.
I am sure that your meeting in Athens will give a strong impetus in this direction. I wish you a pleasant stay in Greece and maximum success in your work.
*Evangelos Venizelos, former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs (2013 –2015) of
Greece, former Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister (2011 - 2012) of Greece, former President of
PASOK (2012-2015), Professor of Constitutional Law at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
