OSCE, Alm.del - 2010-11 (1. samling) - Bilag 22: Talking points for the OSCE PA Standing Committee : Chair of the Ad Hoc Committee on Transparency and Accountability, Johannes Koskinen, MP Finland

1) ThePalermo Paperserved as auseful reference toolfor the PA representative inVienna in the Permanent Council preparations for the Astana Summit.2) The outcome of the Astana Summit is known: the Summit passed a so-called“Commemorative Declaration.” This Declaration reconfirmed the OSCEcommitments, including all Human Dimension commitments. The Summit did,however, not reach consensus on an Action Plan, for which most countries hadurged. However, since “99 per cent of the draft were agreed”, there is broadconsensus among delegations in Vienna to use the draft as a basis for future work,.The Lithuanian Chairmanship has been tasked in the Commemorative Declaration tocontinue working on the draft.3) At first glance, the following can be said about thetwo documents:The Palermo paper called for a reconfirmation of Commitments. The AstanaDeclaration represents such an explicit reconfirmation.Both the Declaration and the draft Action Plan/Work Plan of the LithuanianChairmanship focus on the First Dimension issues listed in the Palermo Paper.Migration will figure on the agenda of the OSCE this year, however not in thesame in-depth manner as in the Palermo Paper, but rather focusing solely onillegal immigration.Energy security has been referred to in the Summit documents. The LithuanianChairmanship will focus on this topic, i.e. by organizing a seminar in the spring of2011.The Legal Framework was mentioned in the document and will be anotherpriority of the Lithuanian Chairmanship.The Action Plan also speaks of intensifying cooperation with the Partners.No concrete steps have thus far been taken thus far in the field of enhancing theOSCE’s effectiveness (“OSCE Reform”). The OSCE SG plans to make a number ofproposals and has welcomed the PA’s announcement to make this issue the topicof its Annual Session.4) On the other hand, the preparations for Astana also revealed once more that weneed to do much more to make the diplomatic community understand thevalue ofparliamentary work in general and that of the PA in particular.The most commonmisunderstanding is that governments make up the rules and that parliaments haveto implement them. While this idea is wide-spread among diplomats, our views onthe central role ofparliamentary oversight and democratic accountabilityare notshared by many of them. Ourcalls for a strengthening of the accountability andtransparency of the OSCEare seen asundue interferencein their work andconsequently considered astabooin texts produced by executive structures.

5) Another taboo for the diplomats is to accept that the PA is anOSCE institution,although the Istanbul Summit in 1999 explicitly stated that we are one. There havebeen strong efforts to somehow define us out of the OSCE.6) Thanks to hard work on the part of Secretary General Oliver and AmbassadorNothelle and political interventions by some of our members, we can live with the PArelated wordings that finally figured in the declaration and in the draft Action Plan.However, we need to continue working on this important aspect of the much neededOSCE reform.7) The Palermo paper calls for a continuation of theCorfu process.It appears that themanagement of this will bepartially outsourcedto a New York based Think Tankwhose Vienna based director for Europe and Central Asia has describedparliamentary election observers in a very insulting manner. We will have to closelywatch how the work of this institute, the “International Peace Institute”, will addressthe issues I just mentioned.8) On Wednesday evening, we agreed on the followingsteps that we will take next:End of April we will circulate a draft report among the members of the TransparencyCommittee, which will continue an analysis of what will have happened in themeantime, and a list of proposals and recommendations for the future. After adiscussion of this text in a meeting of the committee which we will most probablyschedule to take place inVienna mid-May,we will then deliver this report to theAnnual Session in Belgrade.