The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe

(CSCE) involved thirty‐three European states plus the United States and Canada in a series of negotiations bridging the East‐West divide through the 1970s and 1980s. Washington linked initial U.S. participation to settlement of the status of Berlin and Soviet agreement to parallel talks on conventional force reductions (the MBFR). The CSCE Final Act, signed in Helsinki on 1 August 1975, codified the diplomatic “rules of the road” for the remainder of the Cold War, including the inviolability of frontiers, nonintervention, and respect for human rights.

Publication of the Final Act catalyzed an upsurge of activity for human rights and in opposition to totalitarianism across the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the mid‐late 1970s. CSCE review meetings in Belgrade (1977–78), Madrid (1980–83), and Vienna (1986–89) focused on implementation and extension of the Final Act, especially in the areas of human rights and military confidence‐building measures. By 1989, the political principles established by the Final Act were widely credited with contributing to the collapse of Communist rule in Eastern Europe.

After the Cold War, the CSCE established a permanent Secretariat in Prague, a Conflict Prevention Center in Vienna, an Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights in Warsaw, and an Office on National Minorities in the Hague. With the breakup of the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, and the accession of Albania, membership in the CSCE increased from thirty‐five to fifty‐three states. In 1994, it was renamed the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Since then, the OSCE has supervised democratic elections, promoted respect for human rights in new laws and constitutions, and negotiated and monitored cease‐fires throughout Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

[See also Helsinki Watch.]

Bibliography

• John J. Maresca, To Helsinki: The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, 1972–1975, 1987.
• Daniel C. Thomas, The Power of International Norms: Human Rights, the Helsinki Accords and the Demise of Communism, forthcoming 2000

A series of negotiations held by thirty-three European states, Canada, and the United States to address the security and stability of Europe. On August 1, 1975, it culminated in the signing of the CSCE Final Act, also called the Helsinki Accords, which established diplomacy for the remainder of the Cold War, including the inviolability of existing borders, nonintervention in the internal affairs of other states, and respect for human rights. In 1994 it was renamed the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

The CSCE met in Helsinki in 1975, attended by the members of NATO, Warsaw Pact, and the European neutral states. The Helsinki agreement was the outcome of several years of negotiation between the two Cold War alliances and represented one of the notable achievements of détente, given that CSCE works by consent and lacks any system of majority voting. The agreement covered a declaration of principles (including non-violability of boundaries, non-intervention, territorial integrity of states), and three ‘baskets’ of areas of agreement including confidence-building measures such as advance notification of military manoeuvres (basket one), economic and other co-operation (basket two), and humanitarian and human rights cooperation (basket three). While the Soviets emphasized the declaration of principles and basket two, NATO gave greater emphasis to basket three. The end of the Cold War transformed the situation of CSCE, and the meeting in Paris in 1990 concluded the ‘Charter of Paris for a new Europe’, which normalized relations between the European states. In 1995 the CSCE became the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Membership has expanded to over fifty, and includes the states of the former Soviet Union, including the new states of Central Asia. The OSCE played a part in the peacekeeping operation that followed the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, and under the Charter on European Security (adopted in 1999) sought to consolidate this role. It is thus a part of the new architecture of European security but its consensual nature prevents it from playing a central role in the development of security arrangements for Eastern Europe.

— Peter Byrd