OSCE, Alm.del - 2013-14 - Bilag 36: Nyhedsbrev fra Ambassadør Andreas Nothelle, uge 14-15, 16-17 og 18, 2014

PC Brief Week 18, 2014This week, because of the holiday (May 1st), was another week with initially almost nomeetings scheduled. However, in the end, because of the Ukrainian crisis, the ongoingbudget negotiations and other circumstances, there were three special PC meetings,one again jointly with the FSC, a meeting of the Ambassadorial Working Group on Hel-sinki+40, as well as meetings of the Preparatory Committee (PrepCom) and the Advi-sory Committee on Management an Finance (ACMF) during the first three days of theweek. Marc Carillet represented the PA in all meetings, because I was participating inthe Regional (South East Europe) OSCE Heads of Missions Meeting (RHoMM) in Mon-tenegro, together with the Special Representative on South East Europe, Roberto Bat-telli. Roberto Montella and Francesco Pagani (together with Firuze Demir) staffed thePA’s election observation mission in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.Despite the high number of meetings, the discussions were as unproductive as in thepast weeks, with the exception of two formal PC decisions recommending to the minis-ters the appointment, through the silence procedure, of Michael Link as successor toODIHR Director Lenarcic and the extension of the mandate of OSCE Secretary Gen-eral Lamberto Zannier for another three years. Russia again did not participate in theVienna Doument (VD) triggered discussions of the joint PC-FSC meeting. A HumanDimension Seminar is planned to take place on 12-14th of May in Warsaw, but there isstill no consensus of the agenda. Marc Carillet briefed the PC on the PA’s activities inUkraine and the Helsinki+40 Working Group on the PA’s project.Despite some optimistic signals, the 2014 OSCE Budget also still lacks consensus.This endangers OSCE field work. In addition, as we learnt at the RHoMM, the currentrequirement for governments to deviate funds to the very costly Special MonitoringMission on Ukraine (SMM) threatens the project work of the missions in the region,which rely heavily on extra-budgetary funds.In this context it is notable that – while 4,29 Million Euros had been pledged until thebeginning of the week, out of the almost 23 Million necessary for deployment of a fullmission with 500 observers - only 1.6 million Euros had at that point actually been re-ceived on the OSCE bank account. At the same time, 142 monitors and 17 core staffwere already deployed in Ukraine. Also this will have an impact on the work in the field,because the missions have not only dispatched their staff to Ukraine during the firstimmediate response phase of the SMM deployment and are providing the SMM withmaterial resources, but some experienced key staff from the missions moved perma-nently to the SMM, leaving the missions with vacancies that they urgently need to fill.