Speech by Jean-Noël Barrot, Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School (25 septembre 2025)

Harvard Kennedy School
Thursday, September 25, 2025

==INTRODUCTION==

I grew up in central France, on land ringed by old mountains and dormant volcanoes.

I grew up with the legend of a hero. A hero who was also born there, on this land ringed by old mountains and sleeping volcanoes. A hero of two worlds. France and America.

Let me tell you his story.

He was raised by his mother and aunts. When he turned 19, he heard of men fighting for freedom and democracy on the other side of the Atlantic. He defied the French authorities, boarded the Victory in Bordeaux, and landed in North Island near Georgetown, South Carolina. He stood shoulder to shoulder with the American Patriots and fought amongst them. He became friends with George Washington. He also bonded with Thomas Jefferson, who was writing the Declaration of Independence.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Our young took these powerful words back to France. And three days before the Storming of the Bastille, he wrote the first draft of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen as follows:

"Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. The aim of every political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of Man. These rights are Liberty, Property, Safety, and Resistance to Oppression."

This is the story of Lafayette. This was 250 years ago. But these powerful words have survived the test of time.

So much so, that a century and a half later, the same story happened, but the other way around. On the full-moon night of June 6, 1944, thousands of young Americans boarded ships heading to the shores of Normandy where many of them would spill their blood. To liberate France from oppression.

For the same reason Lafayette had crossed the Atlantic in the first place.

So think for a minute. Ask yourself.
Why did these young men cross the Atlantic and risk everything? Why did they do it? What does it take?

It takes one simple idea. An idea that France and the United States have championed for over two centuries. An idea that has brought so much to the world and that holds in one single word.

Democracy.

Democracy as the vision of a society in which enlightened citizens decide for themselves.

Democracy as a fragile but incredibly powerful institutional framework resting on three pillars:

The first is fundamental rights - some rights are sacred.
The second is "one man, one vote" - law is made by the people for the people.
The third is the rule of law - everyone has equal rights, no one is above the law.

If all three principles hold, democracy will hold.
Should one be shaken, democracy will falter.

==PARTIE 1== WHY DEMOCRACY IS POWERFUL

But when democracy holds, it is indeed the most conducive institutional framework for prosperity, welfare, and peace.

That is not an opinion. It is a statement grounded in scientific research.

What does research tell us?

Harvard professor Andrei Shleifer, the most cited economist in the world with over 400,000 citations, has provided broad range of evidence that legal tradition is a key driver of a country's development. He and coauthored have shown that the rule of law leads to stronger investor protection, deeper and broader capital markets, and-ultimately-higher economic growth. The intuition is simple. If private property is protected. If intellectual property is protected. Then entrepreneurs and innovators are incentivized to create value and advance the knowledge frontier.

I just quoted a Harvard economist. Allow me to turn to a MIT economist who has had so much influence on my own research when I was a professor there. Nobel Laureate Daron Acemoglu. Daron and coauthors have shown that democracy does cause growth. Democratization raises GDP per capita by about 20% in the long run. And the effects are driven by greater investments of democracy in capital, schooling, and health. In groundbreaking work, Daron has found that inclusive institutions, those that ensure everyone benefits from growth are at the core of why some countries grow rich while others stay poor.

Some will say that GDP is not a sufficient statistic for welfare. They may be right. Let's look at others. Research published in The Lancet has shown that democracy has a positive causal effect on life expectancy. Controlling for other factors, adult life expectancy increases by 3% over 10 years for countries that transition to democracy. Consistent with this is the negative correlation between democracy and infant mortality. And beyond that, the positive correlation between democracy and subjective well-being documented in many papers.

Democracy is conducive to prosperity. To welfare. And democracy is conducive to peace. No need to graduate from Harvard Kennedy School to see the pattern: over the past 80 years, no mature democracy has ever gone at war with another. Most importantly, democracy was used as the basic model to build the international order on the ashes of World War II. Read the United Nations Charter, that was signed 80 years ago in San Francisco. You will recognize the words of Lafayette and Jefferson.

You will see the three pillars of democracy I mentioned - translated to the international level, among nations:
The first is fundamental rights: territorial integrity and self-determination.
The second is "one nation, one vote", with each country having the same share of power at the General Assembly.
The third is the rule of law, with the same rules applying to every nation.

The number one purpose of the United Nations was to maintain international peace and security. Has it worked? Yes it has!

The guiding principle of territorial integrity has made it very costly for any country to invade its neighbors. All conflicts have not been avoided, far from it. But the mediating role of the General Assembly and the Security Council has prevented many tensions from drifting into fully blown wars.
Further, research has shown that the UN peacekeeping missions and other peacebuilding activities lead to less violence, improved human rights, and more stable post-conflict environments. That they lead to fewer conflicts. That they are clearly a cost-effective way of increasing global security.

Prosperity, welfare, peace. Democracy has brought so much to our civilization.

Yet everywhere I look, fundamental rights are challenged, the rule of law is contested. Everywhere I look, I see democracy under fire.

==PARTIE 2== DEMOCRACY UNDER FIRE

From without, authoritarians have their playbook. They fear democracy like vampires fear sunlight. That's why they drain its essence, they sap its strength. When you don't believe in your people's capacity to face the challenges every nation must overcome, you can convince yourself that concentrating power is the answer.

So long, the rule of law. So long, international law. So long, dialogue and multilateralism.

They whisper a vicious idea into obsequious ears: toss overboard the principles we've lived by for decades, because only they can quickly cure the frustrations liberal democracy has stirred in so many citizens. But time tells the truth - and in time we see how much power has been taken from the people.

The authoritarians' script is always the same:

• Disguise: a dictator presented as an elected "democratic" president
• Divide: crisis is a business - stoke separatist here, invent a "deep-state" there.
• Destroy: the rule of law first, then checks and balances, independence of justice, judges themselves, journalists, scientists, academics.
• Declare victory: because, as they say, elections are a waste of time.

Even Star Wars knows the script. Darth Sidious, the dark lord of the Sith, shows how a galaxy can slide from democracy to dictatorship in four steps. Easy, and replicable.

• Step one: disguise yourself as a senator.
• Step two: foster a fake separatist threat.
• Step three: get rid of the Jedi Order, the ultimate counter-power.
• Step four: declare the end of the Republic and the advent of the Empire "for security."

No doubt Benjamin Franklin would have wielded a green lightsaber if you ask me.

Fortunately, the return of the Jedi puts an end to all this.
But this scenario is less and less a fiction.

Look at Vladimir Putin. The reason behind his colonial wars-Georgia in 2008, Ukraine since 2014-is simple: democracy. The choice of Georgians and Ukrainians to turn toward Europe threatened democratic contagion. So, he staged fake separatist fronts to justify breaking international law. He launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and tried to manipulate elections in Germany, Romania, and Moldova.
Has he succeeded? No.
Will he? Certainly not.
Why? Because democracy is an idea. You cannot bomb an idea - or drone away a people's will to decide its fate.

Beyond Ukraine, Vladimir Putin targets the European Union itself - an intrinsically democratic project. He hates it, and he hates what it represents. And he's not alone.

As a French political leader, I see authoritarian leaders gaining ground across the world, including in Europe. The moment they seize power, they fear one thing above all: the spread of democracy within their borders and to their neighbors. They fear it as one fears a deadly virus. Nothing frightens them more than its diffusion. They will do whatever it takes to stop it-brute force, blackmail, disinformation, election manipulation. The battlefield for democracy has not only shifted in recent years, it has expanded into new domains, including the so-called social networks.

Here is a crucial point: too often our democracies still view the world through purely material lens. That must change. The forces that want to bring democracy down have reclaimed the battleground of the mind, the narrative space. They have moved into a realm too many democratic leaders abandoned: spirituality - not as sectarian religion, but as the capacity to imagine a political project that lets people serve a purpose beyond themselves.

I also see assaults from within.

In mature democracies across Europe and North America, the greatest threat comes less from coups than from leaders elected or able to be elected. Wannabe strongmen weaponize emotion-using algorithms to amplify anger and fear-and turn politics into a permanent theater of outrage. One of democracy's core principles, the protection and the respect of the minority, turns into a phenomenon well identified by Alexis de Tocqueville: tyranny of the majority.

Within our democracies, adversaries are advancing. They do not simply seek office; they seek ownership-of the story we tell ourselves, the rules that bind us, and the referees who keep the game fair.

Their objective is simple: capture power by hollowing out the meaning of consent. And they have a method.

First, brakes are broken.

Limits are always tested, geopolitically surprising links with foreign authoritarian forces appear, platforms are turned into accelerants, and the red lines of sovereignty are blurred-from a neighbor's border to a contested island, from strategic ice to a narrow canal. The message is constant: force beats law; audacity outruns accountability.

Then, the public square is shrunk and saturated.

They suffocate debate by squeezing the press and harassing those who report the facts. Propaganda is laundered through "private" proxies; campaigns are drenched in disinformation, now turbocharged by AI. The goal is not persuasion but exhaustion: make truth feel unknowable, make citizens feel alone.

Next, they criminalize dissent.

Opponents, NGOs, and rights defenders can hear the knocking at the door: raids, lawsuits, intimidation dressed up as public order. Free speech is dismissed as a luxury for calmer times; conformity is sold as civic duty. Data are erased, research topics are forbidden, subsidies to projects that don't serve the official narrative are cut, teachers have to worry about their saying.

They tilt the vote.

Violence licks at the edges of polling stations; candidates are struck from ballots; journalists and voters are menaced. The contest is pre-rigged, and the result-if inconvenient-is post-contested. Universities, regulators, and public media are packed until resistance becomes ritual, not reality.

They break the separation of powers.

The executive power swells, the law is bent. Judges are replaced or cowed; courts are leaned on; anti-corruption bodies are gutted-or turned, like knives, against critics. The referee becomes a player; the rulebook, a weapon.

And finally, they reward loyalty over merit.

The economy is remade as a patronage machine: contracts, credit, tax breaks for friends; choke points for dissenters. Innovation withers, and in the silence that follows, repression grows tall.
Down this road lies a darker statement: democracy is naïve, Lafayette's ideal obsolete. It should be replaced by an illiberal rule, a "CEO-monarchy." to put an end to what is described as a failed 200-year experience: democracy.

Sometimes I wonder if the people who develop such ideas realize they are denying a period of time which is more or less the US lifetime.

I wonder if they realize this "experience" made the US the great country it is today, in two centuries.

I wonder if they consider every single man and woman they have as fellow citizen.

CEO-monarchy sounds too outrageous to be true? I'm afraid it's not.

Support for democracy has rarely been lower.

Last year, The Economist's Democracy Index fell again to the weakest score since the index began, in 2006.

Since the mid-1990s, dissatisfaction with democracy had risen by about 10 percentage points to 58%. The rise in dissatisfaction has been especially sharp since 2005, when the proportion of dissatisfied citizens was much lower, at 39%.
And this increase had been particularly pronounced in developed democracies.

Here is the most important question of our time: why are the enemies of democracy making progress?

For many, democracy feels like it's breaking its promise-of freedom, security, fulfillment, and yes, the pursuit of happiness. The kitchen-table question is simple: "Will my kids be better off than me?" Unfortunately, too many citizens can't answer "yes" with confidence.

People are tired of grand principles that sound like slogans, of red tape that blurs who does what, of deficits paired with declining public services. Lofty declarations don't help if nothing changes on the ground. Democracy should be something you can feel every day. No one gives their heart to a constitution or a bill. We give it to a living democracy-felt in daily fairness, in voices heard, in promises kept, in changing life for the best-the quiet proofs that hold a people together.

Right now, too many citizens in mature democracies are weary-frustrated, jaded, exhausted, disappointed, tired.

This, plainly, is democratic fatigue. This is what we are facing now. This is what makes necessary the rising of every defender of democracy. Here again, resignation can't prevail and everyone has a share of power to uphold.

It is the quiet erosion of trust, the slow dimming of the civic heartbeat - when the promise of self-government sounds like an echo instead of a call.

Democratic fatigue.

Democratic fatigue is tied to many mixed feelings:

The feeling that citizens are not being heard. That the issues they care about never get addressed. That a distant elite-in Paris or in DC-decides for them without accountability. But to turn a population into a people, we need a shared story and common destiny-even when we disagree.

The feeling that democratic government is failing to deliver. That we are paying more and getting less. Public services, health care, security: too often underperformance. It is our collective organizations which are pointed out here.

The feeling that democracy doesn't shield us from global disruptions. The China shock destroyed millions of jobs and left entire regions of Europe and North America bleeding. Beijing's policies swelled U.S. household debt and cast a shadow over American jobs. Meanwhile, deep shifts in family structures and rising immigration transformed our societies, fueling anxieties that democracy has struggled to address. Digitalization and automation split labor markets and hollowed out the middle class. People feel left to pick up the pieces-alone.

And maybe the worst feeling as it is so difficult to struggle with: the paradoxical feeling of injustice and frustration our materialist societies generate, despite the undeniable welfare we live in compared to the large majority of the planet population.

The feeling that democracy is no longer striking the subtle balance between individual autonomy and common purpose that is the necessary condition of self-fulfillment. Paradoxically, we have grown to feel that we lack both of them. We lack autonomy as we feel hindered, we suffer from restrictions to our ability to choose, to decide, to act. We lack common purpose as we no longer feel drawn into endeavors greater than ourselves.

This democratic fatigue didn't appear by accident. This is the result of decades of elite blindness to a world in upheaval-and of denying the legitimate exasperation of middle- and working-class citizens who are tired of feeling looked down upon and pushed aside. The failure of democrats lies in their inability to sketch a new horizon, to meet that anger with answers. Democracy is not a luxury brand: all marketing, no delivery. The greater threat is not tanks, it's resignation.

For years, democrats in the U.S.-and many in Europe-have let our institutions drift until too many citizens have felt dispossessed of power. Who decides? Who is accountable? Horizontalization of information through social media and easy access to information - and comparison - made this drift and this opacity lead many voters to turn to populist candidates with simple answers and immediate scapegoats.

Democratic fatigue is also deepened by the grip social media now has on our lives.
Because democracy ends where the Wild West of social media begins. The business model of the platforms breeds filter bubbles. Should we shut them down? No-we need to regulate them, sovereignly and democratically, to protect healthy public debate while safeguarding free speech and knowledge-sharing. Sorry to say to who may listen that democracy prevails over dividends.

Faced with such fatigue, some will be tempted to give up. To give up on Lafayette and Jefferson's legacy. We won't. We will resist-and we will fix democracy. How?

Let's return to democracy's roots: power and responsibility in the hands of citizens.

==PARTIE 3== FIXING DEMOCRACY

Fixing democracy starts with fixing citizenship. Raising genuine citizens. Enlightened citizens able and willing to take responsibility for themselves and for others.

How do we get there? With a great deal of enlightenment, empowerment, and courage.

First, enlightenment. Veritas, as they say in Harvard.

For power to the people only work if people are properly informed. If not, they err in the dark. How can we have a productive debate if we cannot agree on facts, if polarized factions fight over fake news on social networks. If "truth" is being engineered for political purpose?

Enlightenment starts in the classroom, and continues here at Harvard, in universities, where professor dedicate their lives to better understanding the world. And sharing the breadth of their knowledge to their students.

Today, science is questioned. Science is mistrusted. Science is politicized. Yet to raise citizens, we need more research. More academic freedom. More science, not less. Free and open science. We need the competitive emulation of a vibrant academic community. We need the tough discipline of peer review. We need policy evaluation.

So yes we stand!
We stand with free spirits who dream beyond limits. With faculty and students who dare.
We stand with universities facing the threat of government control, restriction to their funding, constraints on their curricula or research projects.
We stand with students, here at Harvard. And elsewhere, that are worried about completing their degrees.

Enlightenment also rests on free press. Journalists that feel independent enough to report on what they see. That are not submitted to editorial pressure or constraint. Media with resources to investigate and reveal inconvenient truths.

So yes we stand!
We stand with fact checkers, whistleblowers, with journalists and who dare.
We stand with independent media striving to do their work.
We stand with those fighting for information integrity.

Fixing citizenship also requires empowerment.

Democratic fatigue can lead to democratic backsliding. When the system seems broken, some start asking: why not try another one-one that concentrates power in a few hands?

The antidote to fix democracy, the only alternative to power concentration is power redistribution. Power back to the people.

Start with a full reset of who does what. Public sector, private sector. Federal government, local government. Government, agencies. The guiding principle should be subsidiarity. Allocate power where it is most effectively exercised. The goal should be to unleash energy. To give each person the means to steer their own life. Open new paths-and call on the impatient to step in with their passion and talent.

Continue with giving more agency to everyone, in all dimensions of their life. People are craving to make their own choices. Let them participate more actively in policy making. People no longer want to vote on a platform every four or five years and have no say in between. France has experimented citizens assemblies on topics like climate change or end of life care. This is a promising path. Other countries have built digital tools to consult people on a more regular basis. To leverage the wisdom of the crowds. We need continuous citizen participation. They need to be actors, not spectators.

Friends, enlightenment and empowerment are not enough without courage.

1978, Alexander Solzhenitsyn delivered the commencement address, here at Harvard. A powerful speech in which he criticized western democracies for their loss of civic courage. Their inability to confront major challenges. He blamed the passivity of the elite, the focus on material comfort, and the spiritual decay. He coined this the decline in courage. He was right.

We need to restore courage.

Courage to place values above interests.
Courage to carry your share of collective burdens, with no certainty that others will do so.
Courage to embrace the spiritual dimension of life and resist the temptation of comfort.
Courage to look at the world with the eyes wide open and be ready to make difficult decisions when they arise.
Courage not to concede to instant pressure, but focus on the right thing to do.

Democracy can be fixed, in France, like in the U.S., if we really want it.

Enlightenment, empowerment, and courage are the key.

Fixing democracy is all about citizens. The making of men and women who listen and debate, vote with clear judgment, hold leaders to account, and step forward for the common good.

Dear students from Harvard,
At this moment of your life, as you are considering your options for what comes next,
You face a choice:
What citizens will you be?
Will you be spectators, or actors?
Will you stand for democracy?

When addressing Congress in 1824, Lafayette said the U.S. "stand as a lesson to oppressors, an example to the oppressed, and a sanctuary for the rights of mankind."

May we live up to the legacy of Jefferson and Lafayette.

May we be inspired by the courage of Lafayette. Of the Boys of D-Day. Of those around the world who are risking everything for freedom and democracy.

We owe it to them, we owe it to ourselves, and to the generations to come.