Former Swiss president elected KiE Secretary General

The Council of Europe elected former Swiss President Alain Berset as the next secretary general on Tuesday evening.

Strasbourg-based Human Rights Organisation's 306-member parliament held a secret vote in two rounds Tuesday. Beset won the second round with 114 votes for Tuesday afternoon. Former Culture Minister of Estonia Indrik Saar received 85 votes in the second round, and Belgian candidate Didier Reynders came in third with 46 votes, reports politicco.eu.

The Council of Europe has 46 member states and includes the European Court of Human Rights. It's an independent body separate from the European Union. Its secretary general is elected for five years.

As Politico.eu writes, Reynders' loss is a major obstacle to the liberal Belgian politician who ran to lead the Council of Europe in 2019 but also lost that race.
It is expected to return to the European Commission as chief of justice by autumn, but it is unclear where it will go next, amid a European Union review of the Commission's upcoming mandate.

New Secretary Alan Berset is expected to start working in September.

He is a member of the Social Democrats and served as president of Switzerland in 2018 and again in 2023. He was minister of health and interior during the COVID-19 pandemic. He announced he would withdraw as president in June 2023, adding at the time that there were no concrete plans for what would happen next.

The current secretary general, former Croatian Foreign Minister Marija Pejcinovic Buric, did not run for a second term.