Special Representative

To:PA PresidentandPA Secretary GeneralSeptember 9, 2013PC Brief Week 36, 2013During this first week after the Summer Recess meetings of the PC, the Human DimensionCommittee as well as some informal meetings took place. Roberto Montella accompanied thePA President to Copenhagen and Warsaw.The PC had a routine agenda with reports by the Head of the Mission in Kosovo, the PersonalRepresentative of the CiO on Art. 4 of the Dayton Agreement and the Chairs of the threecommittees. There were no issues raised under Current Issues, and the debate on the reportswas short without any surprises. In fact, one of the ambassadors, when talking to me, charac-terized the PC as “terribly boring”. The Slovak ambassador who chairs the second committeesuggested, also in a conversation with me, that the PA support her intention to put one focusin the second dimension on the protection of non-nuclear critical energy infrastructure fromnatural and man-made disasters (the first committee deals with the protection against terroristattacks). This is what is left over from the full issue of Energy Security, which many participat-ing States refuse to discuss in the OSCE. Equally in a private conversation, the Chairman ofthe third committee told me that he would appreciate an appearance of the Bureau of the PA’sthird committee in his committee before the Ministerial Council Meeting this year.The Human Dimension Committee mandated two informal working groups to continue to workon reforming of the Human Dimension events and updating the 2003 Action Plan against Traf-ficking in Human Beings. ODIHR presented a report on its election activities. The ODIHR’selection department has a budget of 6,5 million Euro (out of which 3,5 million Euros are spenton consultancies) and counts 11 professionals and 5,5 assisting staff. The Long Term observ-ers that are not part of the ODIHR’s Core Teams and the Short Term observers are seconded(paid) by participating States. This year, according to the report, it is expected to deploy 17election observation activities. Marc Carillet from our office made a statement about the PA’smost recent and ongoing activities. Last year, the PA deployed 10 missions, on a budget ofless than 200.000 Euros.The PC bade farewell to the US ambassador with whom I had weekly consultations throughoutthe last years. His successor will arrive next week. After the many changes reported before therecess, there were more than ten new ambassadors this week alone. Such large turnover isalways a challenge for continuity, especially regarding the PA-PC relationship.In the coming weeks, there will be two events outside of Vienna (Economic Forum in Pragueand Human Dimension Implementation Meeting in Warsaw), as well as an ambassadorial tripto South East Europe (on which – according to the ambassador of Norway who organizes it –a PA Representative is not welcome). This means that for some weeks activities in Vienna willremain on a low level. Between now and October 10 there will be only one more regular PC.