OSCE, Alm.del - 2012-13 - Bilag 17: Nyhedsbrev fra Ambassadør Andreas Nothelle, uge 6, 2013

PC Brief Week 6, 2013This week, five Sessions of the First Preparatory Meeting of the 21st Environmental and EconomicForum: "Increasing Stability and Security: Improving the environmental footprint of energy-relatedactivities in the OSCE region" took place in Vienna. There were also meetings of the PermanentCouncil (PC), the Forum for Security Cooperation (FSC), the Preparatory Committee and theACMF.As the result of a “high-level political agreement”, one day after last week’s report was out, partici-pating States achieved consensus on the 2013 Unified Budget on the basis of the draft from De-cember 21, 2012. As I pointed out last week, the ODIHR has created an extra-budgetary project atthe request of the Chairmanship entitled “Review of Electoral Legislation and Practice of OSCEparticipating States”, a long-standing request by Russia. The 100 000 Euro project, the outcome ofwhich is meant to be publicly available, has now been partly financed by Kazakhstan, Norway,Switzerland and Turkey. In the meeting of the Permanent Council, Norway, also on behalf of Swit-zerland, criticized that they had to finance a project that they did not find “of particular importance”,putting the blame on Russia, but also deploring lack of a more “cooperative and pragmatic ap-proach” on the side of its Western partners.The budget is slightly lower (3.2 million Euros) than it was last year, meaning another significantdecrease in real terms. The financial resources of the organization steadily continue to dry out,from 185 million in 2003 to less than 145 million Euros this year. At the same time, the Secretariatin Vienna was strengthened by six additional staff; five of them seconded by participating States.The ODIHR remains on the same level as last year. Many participating States deplored that thenext steps that need to be taken in order to implement the Vilnius Ministerial Decision on the Con-flict Cycle, in particular those related to rapid reaction, did not receive the necessary financial sup-port. The same is true for enhanced efforts of the field presences in Central Asia. The PC alsoadopted the Scales of Contribution for 2013 to 2015 which remain the same as in the last years.I reported again about the status of the ongoing OSCE PA election observation in Armenia, includ-ing the meetings PA staff held with ODIHR staff on the ground (details are contained in the Newsfrom Copenhagen). I concluded by saying that we are confident that the OSCE PA election obser-vation mission will be as successful as previous ones, for instance last December in Romania.With the ODIHR running out of money (like it did before the Romanian elections that it did not for-mally observe – despite an election observation budget of more than 6.5 million Euros -) andODIHR’s failure to get sufficient Long Term Observers from participating States like in Italy, the PAmight have to make an additional extra effort in order to ensure continuity in election observation.

Special Representative