Andrei Savinykh: OSCE is dismantling generally accepted principles of communication

On February 23–24, 2023 the Hofburg Congress Centre in Vienna will host the 22nd Winter Meeting of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly (Programme).

 

At a coordination meeting of heads of parliamentary delegations of the CSTO Member States to the OSCE PA on February 16, Andrei Savinykh, Chairman of the Standing Commission on International Affairs of the House of Representatives of the National Assembly of the Republic of Belarus and Head of the Parliamentary Delegation of the National Assembly of the Republic of Belarus to the OSCE PA, expressed concern aboutattempts to introduce certain changes to the Organization’s Rules of Procedure.

 

“The situation in Europe now raises the question of whether the arrangements, procedures and institutions that have been established within the framework of the OSCE and this comprehensive treaty are working. The question is whether the treaty itself is functioning at all. It seems to me that our Western partners have given up on it. And to put it bluntly, rather than diplomatically, the process of encroaching upon the interests of the countries of our region takes time. They are gradually dismantling these institutions and generally accepted principles of communication. And they are doing it through the amendments to the Rules of Procedure, abolishing the right of consensus, because this automatically gives them a majority vote in these regional institutions,” Mr Savinykh said. 

 

In his view, this already means the substantive and political death of the OSCE. 

 

“This is a very dangerous process. I do not know whether we can stop it, because the completion of certain processes would logically mean the need to renegotiate literally all the issues, especially security-related ones. And the process of new relations must be based on the principle of the indivisibility of security, because otherwise we will not secure any sustainable order in the OSCE area. And then there is a question of how wisely and clearly we understand our regional interests within the CSTO,” concluded Andrei Savinykh.

 

As you may recall, the OSCE dates back to a period of détente in the early 1970s, when the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) was established to serve as a multilateral forum for dialogue and negotiation between the East and the West.