Special Representative
To:
PA President
and
PA Secretary General
PC Brief Week 10, 2016
This week, there were meetings of the Permanent Council (PC), a joint meeting of the PC and
the Forum for Security Cooperation (FSC), the first
Contact Group Meeting with the Asian
Partners for Co-operation, several meetings of the Preparatory Committee (PrepComm)
and a number of informal meetings.
Francesco Pagani participated in a meeting on “The EU,
the OSCE and the Future of European Security” in Rome.
The PC took a decision on a second set of (voluntary) “OSCE Confidence-Building Measures to
Reduce the Risks of Conflict Stemming from the Use of Information and Communication Tech-
nologies - PC.DEC/1202”. The main activities this week, however, revolved around the urgent
issue of finding a successor for Dunja Mijatovic as the Representative on Freedom of the Media.
Her term expired on Thursday. After Russia had made clear that it would not agree to any of the
nine candidates that delegations had interviewed – some of them several times – during the last
months, efforts were made to extend Mijatovic’s term. On Friday, delegations were close to a
consensus on a one-year extension, but one delegation made a timely consensus impossible,
because that delegation could not get instructions from the capital on time, due to holidays in
the country. Mijatovic presented to the PC what was meant to be her last report, so an extreme-
ly high number of delegations had prepared farewell statements. In light of the ongoing negotia-
tions about the extension of her mandate, the many hours that the PC spent on this agenda
item seemed almost surreal.
Another agenda item, triggered by the International Women’s day and introduced by the State
Secretary of the German Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth,
Ralf Kleindiek, also resulted in a high number of solemn statements by delegations – nota bene,
all this taking place behind closed doors. In exchange, the repetitive mutual polemics on the
crisis in and around Ukraine were a little shorter than usual.
I met with the Permanent OSCE Representatives of Albania and the Russian Federation, and
the Ambassador of Israel, discussing matters relating to PA activities.
Andreas Nothelle
Ambassador
March 11, 2016