The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) risks collapse due to the reluctance of Russia and Belarus to approve Estonia’s presidency in 2024, Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto said on May 28, Finnish news outlet Yle’s Russian service reports.
According to the OSCE’s rules, the rotating chairmanship of the organization must be approved by all 57 member states, but Russia and Belarus did not support Estonia’s candidacy for next year’s chairmanship.
At the same time, Estonia is not ready to give up its candidacy.
The OSCE may collapse before Finland takes over the chairmanship in 2025, Haavisto said, adding that the situation was serious.
“If there is no chairman in 2024 and there is no consensus on this issue, the next year will be the year of the OSCE’s destruction as an organization,” the minister said.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe was established in Budapest, Hungary, in 1994, when a series of meetings on European security and cooperation developed into an organization.
The organization sent a monitoring mission to Ukraine at the beginning of Russia’s war on Ukraine in 2014, at the beginning of Russia’s illegal military occupation of Ukraine’s Crimea.
The mission was to oversee a ceasefire and the implementation of the Minsk peace accords, but the ceasefire was continually broken – most often by Russia, according to OSCE reports – and the accords were never implemented.
The mission ended its operations in March 2022 following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“If there is no chairman in 2024 and there is no consensus on this issue, the next year will be the year of the OSCE’s destruction as an organization,” the minister said.
This useless organisation won’t be missed. If they are going to allow terrorist states to dictate, they might as well dissolve now. There is another option, but only sensible people would take, and that is to remove any scum from the OSCE.
The only way that this “OSCE” is NOT a stupid joke, is if all member states involved, are fully cooperative with each other. Clearly, russia, belarus, and others I might not be aware of, have had their own differing interests. With the name itself involving “Security and Cooperation,” I believe that the whole thing was built on hypocrisy from its beginning.
they won’t be missed.
saves quite some tax payers money.
Although, probably an unpopular opinion, you don’t know to what extent the Russians showed any restraint because of the OSCE.
I once went to a presentation by the leader of the mission in Ukraine, and he said that they of course knew everything, but they were only allowed to go to some border crossing where indeed there were no Russian soldiers crossing the border, at least not with uniform.
The Russians created several others where they couldn’t go.
It had some effect: it did hamper logistics somewhat.
He was a bit more level headed than I expected honestly.