Conflicts around the world are on the rise, and the Russian Federation’s ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine stands as a stark reminder that the European continent is not exempted. In fact, the failure of the international community to prevent this aggression, and to take action before it escalated into the largest conflict in Europe since the Second World War, shows the limited effectiveness of existing mechanisms for early warning and early action in conflict prevention.
In Resolution 2515 (2023), recalling that the Council of Europe was created as a peace project and that democratic security has been central to its mission since the first Summit of Heads of State and Government in Vienna, the Parliamentary Assembly resolved to put more emphasis on parliamentary diplomacy as a tool to defuse tensions, promote dialogue, reinforce mutual understanding and enhance confidence building and conflict prevention; to strengthen the capacity of both the Committee on Political Affairs and Democracy and the Monitoring Committee, in terms of early warning, in line with the conclusions of the 4th Council of Europe Summit; and to enhance co-operation on confidence building and conflict prevention with other international parliamentary assemblies, amongst other measures.
In the present security context fraught with risks, the Assembly should continue its reflection on this matter, with a view to elaborating new tools and mechanisms for early warning and early action in conflict prevention and formulating recommendations to member States. This reflection should include an assessment of existing mechanisms and their limitations and should take into account soft and deep security aspects as well as the evolution of the concept of security, in a world in which the lines between war and peace are increasingly blurred and culture, identity, migration and technology – but the list is potentially unlimited – are used as weapons.