OSCE 25 år

STATEMENT BY

HER EXCELLENCY
MRS. HELLE DEGN
PRESIDENT EMERITUS OF THE OSCE PARLIAMENTARY ASSEMBLY

At the Commemoration of the 25th Anniversary of the signature of the Helsinki Final Act
Tampere, 1 August 2000

Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a particular honour for me to be here in Finland today to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Helsinki Final Act.

On this day 25 years ago, representatives of 35 nations were gathered in Helsinki to adopt and sign the Helsinki Final Act, which has since served as the founding document for what we call the CSCE process. The Helsinki Final Act still represents the basic common values of the participating States. And we will remember and celebrate this day.

Nevertheless, to be faithful to the historic events as they happened we should remember that it was neither the diplomats nor the political leaders of the participating States gathered in Helsinki who found out that the Final Act contained a hidden jewel in the shape of the Principle of Respect for Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. The dissidents of the Soviet Union and the other Warsaw Pact countries made that remarkable discovery.

It was these courageous individuals who took the lead in demanding that their rulers lived up to their commitments. And it was only afterwards that the western publics, and their governments and diplomats took their cue from the dissidents and started to use the meetings to follow-up the Helsinki Final Act to raise the issue of Soviet lack of compliance with their commitments under that Document.

It remains one of the great paradoxes of the era of East West Confrontation that the Final Act, which originally was based on a Soviet initiative, and which was heralded by their propaganda machine as a great victory for Soviet diplomacy, very quickly turned into an effective tool of the dissidents and the Western democracies and in this way made a decisive contribution to undermining the legitimacy of the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

In this context it was of crucial importance that the text of Human Rights Principle of the Final Act unambiguously stated that respect for the relevant commitments is an essential factor for international peace and the development of friendly relations - and not the other way round!

Recognition of democracy as one of the fundamental components of the commitments of all participating States first came in to the text and used phrases in course of the great changes in Europe following the fall of the Communist regimes in the autumn of 1989 when former dissidents took over the governments of Central and Eastern Europe. It was to a large measure thanks to them that the participating States in Copenhagen ten years ago in the summer of 1990 laid down that the ground-rules of democracy were to be an integral part of the common commitments of the OSCE.

At the Paris Summit in November 1990 the triad of respect for human rights, the rule of law and democracy were recognized as the basic values of the OSCE and as the birthright of the citizens of all our countries.

While the governments - and the diplomats - now accepted democracy as one of the guiding principles of the OSCE, they had certain problems in drawing the full consequences of this step. Diplomatic infighting meant that the Heads of State or Government were unable to agree in Paris on modalities for the involvement of parliamentarians into the work of the OSCE. They left the matter to the parliamentarians. In turn the parliamentarians agreed among themselves on the necessary conditions for the setting up of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly. The chequered story of the genesis of the Parliamentary Assembly meant, however, that the OSCE developed along a path of democratic deficit. The Assembly was only given a consultative role and no influence on the decision-making processes of the OSCE. In the first instance this led to a situation where the Parliamentary Assembly was rather restricted to a life on the margins of the OSCE. It also meant that in the first couple of years the main activities of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly consisted in criticising the work of other branches of the OSCE as well as unproductive disputes about the delimitation of competencies in relation to other OSCE institutions.

The Copenhagen Document and the Paris Charter for a New Europe marked the high points of a period of intensive work, which established the main body of OSCE commitments. To this day these achievements form the solid basis of the moral authority of the OSCE.

As we all know, the intervening ten years have seen another rich development in a different direction, through the evolution of the structures and institutions of the OSCE and their gradual adaptation to the new challenges facing the Organisation. At the same time, the OSCE evolved from a series of international conferences into a pragmatic organisation which derives much of its strength from its by now sizeable efforts for conflict prevention and post-conflict rehabilitation. Incidentally, this evolution, including the growth of the financial responsibilities of the Organisation, has obviously increased the need for political oversight and throws in relief the democratic deficit of the Organisation.

Anyway, the evolution of the OSCE over the past years found formal expression in the Charter for European Security adopted at the OSCE Summit in Istanbul in November 1999. The main achievement of the Charter was undoubtedly that it proved possible to establish a formula for a pragmatic collaboration - and co-existence - with the other Organisations which are also stakeholders in the maintenance of security and development of co-operation in the European area, such as the European Union, NATO and the Council of Europe, as well as the many new arrangements for sub-regional co-operation which have sprung up across the old East-West barriers, for instance the Council of Baltic Sea States and the Black Sea Economic Co-operation.

From my own perspective I would like to mention as one of the important achievements of the Istanbul Summit the recognition of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly as one of the most important institutions of the Organisation coupled with a call upon the Assembly to develop its activities further as a key component of the OSCE.

I am very pleased to get this opportunity to share with you my views on the future development of the OSCE and the challenges facing the organisation.

I see the flexibility of the OSCE and its capacity to change as the most important strength of the organisation. With its comprehensive concept of security and its broad membership, covering the area from Vancouver to Vladivostok, the OSCE as a flexible organisation can play a unique role within the European security architecture.

Today, the OSCE has a wide variety of tasks including conflict prevention, crisis management, post-conflict rehabilitation, election observation, supporting development of free media, police training and mediation between ethnic groups. And one promising development since 1997 has been a significant and more focused interest on gender issues.

The OSCE has a large number of long-term field presences in areas of crisis and conflict in the region. Many of these operations have been very successful and I believe they constitute one of the most important parts of the OSCE.

As the President of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, I travelled to 16 of the 20 OSCE Field Missions, and I have become convinced that even the smallest presence in the most far away region makes a difference to the people who live there.

It is in the field that I have experienced the real impact of the OSCE values and commitments as outlined in the Helsinki Final Act and the Charter of Paris: security and stability can only be obtained through adherence to human rights, democracy, rule of law and co-operation. In the field missions it becomes clear that deeds count more than words and that words are not enough.

I certainly hope that the OSCE will continue to flourish and bear good fruit for many years to come.

Even so the situation of the OSCE does contain a number of dark clouds on the horizon, i.e. negative factors which, alone or combined, over time may cause serious trouble for the OSCE.

Firstly, in some respects the OSCE has not kept abreast with the nature of the challenges which it is facing nowadays. Decision-making is still wholly, and rigidly, based upon the consensus rule. More importantly, the issue of the democratic deficit of the OSCE remains unresolved. It is clearly unsatisfactory that the Parliamentary Assembly still lacks a formal role in the decision-making processes of the OSCE. The Council of Europe is still far ahead in its composition of power and showing a better European example of division of power between the legislative and executive branches.

Secondly, as to the substance of its activities the OSCE faces several challenges. On one hand, a number of host countries are requesting the phasing out of the OSCE field missions operating in their country. Without going into the merits and demerits of these demands it should be noted that acceptance of the demands of the host countries would mean a certain decrease of the volume of the OSCE field activities. Obviously the OSCE must be active in these areas which constitute the hotspots of the OSCE area. But one may very well fear that citizens and decision-makers in the more fortunate Western parts of the OSCE area will start asking whether it is really worth the efforts - and the costs - to be members of an Organisation whose main activities are carried out hundreds or thousands of kilometers away. On the other hand countries in the Eastern parts of the OSCE area are beginning to question the concentration of the efforts of the OSCE on former Communist countries. With some justification they ask why the OSCE plays no role in conflicts in Western Europe. Let me add that in addressing these various issues regarding the efforts of the OSCE in the field OSCE parliamentarians could and should play a useful role both in channelling the views of their voters to the decision-making structures of the OSCE and in disseminating the operational views of the OSCE to their publics.

The third question mark regarding the future of the OSCE concerns its institutional arrangements. The development of the office of the Chairman-in-Office has been one of the real innovations of the OSCE and it constitutes one of the main political assets of the Organization. In the course of the nineties able and energetic chairmanships provided continuing momentum to the efforts of the OSCE. It has been of great importance that in this way the OSCE has been able to draw at no or little cost on the activities of sizeable portions of the state administrations of the various chairmanships. Even at the best of times the drawback of this system is a lack of continuity and institutional memory. At the end of each chairmanship the team which has provided leadership to the Organization over the past year will disperse and their place will be taken by another team which is likely to have somewhat different priorities. The really serious question is whether we will also in future be able to rely on a continuing chain of energetic and able chairmanships, or whether we may face a more mixed record, including chairmanships which may not lack the political will, but the administrative strength and capabilities to act. A possible decline of the quality of future chairmanships will undoubted seriously impair the standing of the Organization as a whole. Such a development is likely to be counter-acted by a growth of the importance of the OSCE Secretariat in Vienna. The provisions of the Istanbul Charter, notably the decision to set up REACT teams (Rapid Expert Assistance and Co-operation Teams) has enhanced the position of the Vienna Secretariat. It must, however, be borne in mind that basically the Secretariat was designed expressly as a largely administrative body which provides assistance to the Chairmanship and acts on the strength of the political guidance which it receives from the Chairmanship. It has been the view of an important segment of the membership of the OSCE that the Secretariat should play second fiddle to the Chairmanship. Against that background it remains to be seen whether the Secretariat will be able to - or allowed - to swim on its own in a situation where it is unable to receive effective political guidance from the chairmanship and the Parliamentary Assembly.

Ending this statement celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the Helsinki Final Act one simply have to realise the open conflicts in our region still means and represent signs of political failure or of the unfinished democracies. The military options still should represent the very last option available to our leaders.

It is clear that there are a lot of challenges lying ahead of all of us and we need the OSCE. The OSCE has developed into an institution of common values and guidelines for interstate relations.

In a way it is quite a paradox that an organisation like the OSCE is this successful and gets more and more assignments while real success would mean that the OSCE would have less and less work.

There is no doubt in my mind that the OSCE will be needed in the nearest future not only as a community of values, but more specifically to promote the ideas and beliefs of democracy and human rights as well as the solemn commitments of the participating States - so we have to thank th founding fathers and the future mothers for sharing and standing up for the basic values of democracy and human rights.

Thank you for your attention - and congratulations.