Special Representative
To:
PA President
and
PA Secretary General
PC Brief Weeks 49/50, 2016
For the first of these two weeks the Vienna OSCE Community moved to Hamburg on the occasion
of the OSCE Ministerial Council. During the meetings there, the committees and the PC debated
and negotiated on a number of draft texts. In addition, the PC took some decisions not related to
the texts. The Ministerial Council (MC) adopted texts in the First and Second Dimension of the
OSCE, but again none in the humanitarian (Third) Dimension. In parallel to the MC, the PA held its
Bureau Meeting, as reported in the News from Copenhagen. Francesco Pagani could not partici-
pate in the meetings, because he had to support the OSCE PA Election Observation Mission
(EOM) to the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. In addition, in Vienna, there were meetings
of the Permanent Council (PC), the Forum for Security Cooperation (FSC), and several other
committee meetings, as well as a Conference on Media Freedom Laws, a Conference on Intoler-
ance Against Christians, and an event “2016 International Migrants’ Day: Towards a Global Com-
pact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration”. During this second week, I also joined the EOM in
Skopje.
The highlights of the MC from a PA perspective were PA President Christine Muttonen’s address to
the ministers and the opening address of the Chairman-in-Office, German Foreign Minister Frank-
Walter Steinmeier, in which he characterized the PA as the “democratic backbone” of the OSCE.
More than ever, the drafting taking place for the MC was the display of a situation that confronted
50+ participating States with Russia, and, occasionally, Armenia. The failure of the participating
States to adopt a political Declaration, the declaration on the crisis in and around Ukraine, the draft
decision on the Conflict Cycle and any Third Dimension text also meant that the language on the
PA that they had contained was not adopted (list of adopted documents attached).
The PC approved the agenda and modalities of the twenty-seventh Annual Implementation As-
sessment meeting (AIAM - 28 Feb-1 March 2017) and the timetable (!!) for the MC. More im-
portantly, however, it did not adopt the outstanding extensions of the mandates of the remaining
field presences (see my last report), nor the overdue 2017 Unified Budget. This means that – alt-
hough it was the last regular PC for this year, officially concluding the German Chairmanship –
there will most probably be a number of special meetings before the end of the year. Also, no pro-
gress has been made on the appointments for senior OSCE posts. Most probably next week the
procedure for the succession of Secretary General Zannier will be opened. Cooperation with the
PA was mentioned positively in the report by the Special Representative and Coordinator for Com-
bating Trafficking in Human Beings, in the briefing the ambassador of the former Yugoslav Repub-
lic of Macedonia gave on the elections in his country, and in the closing remarks by the Chairman
of the PC.
I wish you all Merry Christmas, independently from whether you celebrate it, and a Happy New
Year!
Andreas Nothelle
Ambassador
December 16, 2016