Special Representative
To:
PA President
and
PA Secretary General
PC Brief Weeks 1 - 3, 2020
The last weeks of December and the first weeks of January, which included a two-week Winter
Recess, were largely devoted to the Ministerial Council Meeting in Bratislava and the opening
events of the new (Albanian) OSCE Chairmanship. By - in the meantime established - practice the
latter now include the early address of the OSCE PA President to the Permanent Council, a week
after the formal opening by the Chairman-in-Office. All these events took place with active partici-
pation of senior members of the OSCE PA and have been covered by the reporting in the News from
Copenhagen and on the OSCE PA website. They also included the traditional Annual Meeting of
Heads of OSCE Institutions and Field Presences. In addition to these events, there were meetings
of the Permanent Council (PC) and the Forum for Security Cooperation (FSC), in particular during
the Ministerial Council meeting in Bratislava. In parallel, the staff of the Vienna Liaison Office par-
ticipated in the presidential visit to Kyiv, the visit of the Ad-hoc Committee on Countering Terrorism
to Norway, the visit of the OSCE
PA’s
Third General Committee to Berlin, the ODIHR Needs Assess-
ment Mission to Azerbaijan and the Election Observation Mission to Uzbekistan.
The MC decided on the OSCE Chairmanships in the Years 2021 and 2022, to rename the Contact
Group with the Asian Partners for Co-operation and the Contact Group with the Mediterranean
Partners for Co-operation, the Time and Place of the Next Meeting of the OSCE Ministerial Council
and adopted Commemorative Declarations on the Occasion of the 25th Anniversary of the OSCE
Code of Conduct on Politico-Military Aspects of Security and the 25th Anniversary of the OSCE
Principles Governing Non-Proliferation and 15th Anniversary of UNSCR 1540. Finally, there was a
Ministerial Statement on the Negotiations on the Transdniestrian Settlement Process in the "5+2"
Format.
Some see the outcome of the Ministerial as a partial success, largely because it was possible to
decide who will lead the organization in 2021 and 2022 (Sweden and Poland), but also because
some of the informal talks that had been held on the sidelines. However, the OSCE Unified Budget
2020 remains a draft, and the Albanian Chairmanship is faced with the challenge of having to find
a consensus on the (re-)appointment of the most senior OSCE officials.
From a pure OSCE PA perspective, it was encouraging to see how much the
PA’s
contributions and
its participation in all major activities has become an integral part of the work of the
OSCE’s
struc-
tures. The OSCE
PA’s
continuous input and its numerous activities are not only accepted, but ac-
tively requested. For instance, the presidential visit to Kyiv, which included the Chairperson of the
OSCE
PA’s
Third Committee Kyriakos Kyriakou-Hadjiyianni (Cyprus) and the Rapporteur of the Sec-
ond General Committee Elona Gjebrea Hoxha (Albania), as it took place right after the Normandy
Four Summit, offered an excellent opportunity to get first-hand information and discuss the results
with
Ukraine’s
leadership.
Andreas Nothelle
Ambassador
January 21, 2020