Organizația pentru Securitate și Cooperare în Europa
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe

Summary/Abstract: A key element of the European security architecture, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), is the forum joining all the European countries, as well as Canada and the United States. This forum was created in the early 1970s under the name of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) and its purpose was to provide contacts and cooperation among the European countries under fully equal conditions. The long negotiations that took place in Geneva resulted in the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which was signed in Helsinki on 1 August 1975. The Act represented a “code of good conduct”, a genuine “charter of inter-European relations. The Declaration adopted on the occasion asserted the principles governing the mutual relationships among the participatory States, in compliance with the United Nations Charter, the so-called “Ten Commandments” referring to sovereign equality, refraining from the threat or use of force, inviolability of frontiers, peaceful settlement of disputes, non-intervention in internal affairs. The procedural and the structural system of the CSCE turned out to be a flexible framework for consultation and dialogue, which entailed a sustainable system of security and cooperation, as well as “moral code of good conduct” in Europe, based upon amiable relations, equality and observance of the rights inherent to sovereignty, refraining from the threat or use of force, inviolability of frontiers, territorial integrity, etc. The changes that took place in Europe after the events of 1989 raised the question of a political re-orientation of the CSCE. Thus, in November 1990, the Heads of States and Governments of the signatory countries of the Final Act of Helsinki put their signatures on the “Charter of Paris for a new Europe”, which was a programme for the future development of Europe on two basic pillars: restoration of the western democratic values and institutional development. Thus, transformation of the CSCE into the OSCE in 1994 was also accompanied by a number of qualitative changes. Stable and coherent institutions were created, including: The Conflict Prevention Center in Vienna, The Office for Free Elections in Warsaw, The OSCE Secretariat in Prague, the periodical conferences (every two years) of the Heads of States and Governments, The Ministerial Council, etc., all these determining the change of the organization’s name from CSCE into OSCE. Owing to its enlargement, the OSCE turned into an assembly of States distributed on three continents: American, European and Asian. One of its reunions pointed out the key role played by the Organization in providing security and stability in the European area and laid down the bases of long process called “Implementation of the human dimension”, whose purpose was to provide observance of human rights, in all dimensions, by the Member States.

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