Swiss Nationals at the Council of Europe

The Secretary General represents the Council of Europe externally and heads the Secretariat. In June 2024, Alain Berset was elected to this position by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe for a term of five years. The political scientist and economist holds a doctorate from the University of Neuchâtel/Switzerland and has worked as a strategy and communications consultant. He was a member of the Constitutional Council of the Canton of Fribourg and later a member of the Council of States of the same canton. In 2012, Parliament elected him to the Federal Council, where he headed the Federal Department of Home Affairs until 2023. In 2018, he was elected President of the Swiss Confederation for the customary one-year term of office.

Every member State of the Council of Europe is entitled to send one judge to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). The judge in respect of Switzerland is Andreas Zünd who was elected in 2021 – the election delayed by seven months due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The lawyer and judge got his Ph.D. from the University of Bern, worked at one of Switzerland’s courts of appeal and served as judge to the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland from 2003 until he was elected to the ECtHR. Due to his age, Andreas Zünd will not be able to serve the full nine-year term of office because judges at the ECtHR are required to retire at the age of 70.

Every Council of Europe Member State is represented before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) by a government agent. Switzerland’s agent since 2025 is Xavier-Baptiste Ruedin. Attorney at law, X.-B. Ruedin (MJur) holds a PhD on the execution of ECtHR’s judgments, worked for the Swiss Federal Administrative Court, served as law clerk of Judge Joan E. Donoghue at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague and headed the Asset Recovery Section of the Directorate of International Law (Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs). Today, X.-B. Ruedin heads the International Human Rights Protection Unit at the Swiss Federal Office of Justice and represents Switzerland not only before the ECtHR but also before various human rights treaty bodies of the United Nations.

Liechtenstein has a tradition of nominating Swiss nationals for certain international judicial offices, and in 2024 Swiss national Alain Chablais was elected as a judge at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) on behalf of the neighbouring state. With a doctorate in law, he worked at the Council of Europe, inter alia in the Department for the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and in the Secretariat of the Venice Commission. In 2009, he was elected as a judge at the Federal Administrative Court of Switzerland, and three years later as a professor of public law at the University of Neuchâtel. Until his election to the ECHR, Alain Chablais was head of the International Human Rights Protection Division at the Swiss Federal Office of Justice and represented Switzerland not only before the European Court of Human Rights, but also before various United Nations monitoring bodies.

Petra Dörr was appointed as the director of the European Directorate for the Quality of Medicines and Healthcare (EDQM) in 2021. As a PhD pharmacist she worked in the medical products industry for a decade in international regulatory affairs. She joined Swissmedic in 2004 as the head of International Affairs, was a member of the board and became deputy executive director in 2014. Before her current appointment she headed the unit Regulation and Safety at the World Health Organization (WHO).

Regina Kiener is a professor for constitutional and administrative law, including public procedural law, at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. She’s a lecturer at the Center of Competence for Public Management at the University of Bern as well as at the Swiss Judicial Academy. In 2013, she became Switzerland’s representative in the Venice Commission, the Council of Europe’s advisory body for legal and constitutional matters.

Bertil Cottier is a professor for Communication Law at the Università della Svizzera italiana in Lugano/Switzerland as well as an associate professor at the law faculty of the University of Lausanne/Switzerland and a guest professor at the Academy of Journalism of the University of Neuchâtel/Switzerland. The former deputy director of the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law was appointed Swiss representative to the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), the Council of Europe’s chief instrument in the fight against racism, discrimination, xenophobia, anti-Semitism and intolerance – in 2019.

Ronald Gramigna is an expert in penal enforcement, prison management and forensic psychology, and president of the Swiss Society for Forensic Psychology. He holds a doctorate in psychology and is a federally recognised psychotherapist. He has worked in psychiatric clinics and as a prison psychologist. He was director of the Zug cantonal prison for eight years and later headed the Department of Penal Enforcement and Measures at the Federal Office of Justice. He has previously represented Switzerland in Council of Europe bodies such as the Council for Penological Co-operation (PC-CP) and the Conferences of Directors of Prison and Probation Services (CDPPS). In 2025, he was elected as an expert to the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) on behalf of Switzerland.

Luzius Wildhaber (1937-2020) was professor of public international law as well as constitutional and administrative law at the University of Basel in Switzerland. Before he became a judge of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in 1991, he had served as a judge in Liechtenstein, Switzerland and on the Administrative Tribunal of the Inter-American Development Bank. When the Council of Europe turned the Court into a full-time body in 1998, Luzius Wildhaber was elected its first President, a key role he played until he retired in 2006. In 2025, the “Luzius Wildhaber” Room in the Human Rights Building was inaugurated in order to honour his commitment to the Court.

Before he joined the Council of Europe, Philippe Boillat was head of the department for Human Rights and the Council of Europe in Switzerland’s Federal Office of Justice as well as the Swiss agent before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). From 2005 – 2017 he headed the Directorate General of Human Rights and the Rule of Law of the Council of Europe.

Liliane Maury Pasquier was elected President of the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) in 2018. She’s the fourth woman – and the first female Swiss representative – to hold this post since the foundation of the Council of Europe. A member of the Social Democratic Party she was Councillor to the National Council of the Swiss Parliament for 12 years before she was elected Councillor to the Council of States of the Swiss Parliament in 2007. She was a member of the Swiss Delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly since 2008, was elected President in 2018 and re-elected for a second term in 2019.

From 2024 until 2025, David Best held the post as Special Representative on Migration and Refugees. Previous postings as a Swiss diplomat had taken the political scientist to Harare, Moscow, Bogotà, Vienna, Washington, Bern and Hanoi. His history with the Council of Europe had started in 2009, when he supported the team in Strasbourg during the Swiss chairmanship of the Committee of Ministers as a special advisor in Bern, and went on when he was appointed Deputy to the Permanent Representative of Switzerland to the Council of Europe in Strassburg in 2021.