The Organization for safety and the co-operation in Europe (SOEC) was born at the time of the Conférence on Safety and the Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) open in 1973 to support the multilateral dialog and the negotiation between the East and the West.

The SOEC is the only European organization with vocation general practitioner accommodating the totality of the States continent of Europe, as those which are not, but which was born from the dissolution of the Soviet Union. It offers thus to Europe and contiguous countries, in the the Caucasus or in Central Asia, the possibility of maintaining a political dialog permanent.

The stages which marked out the history of this organization

  • 1973 : opening of the CSCE and launching of a East-West multilateral dialog European co-operation safety called “process of Helsinki” which falls under the phase known as of “thaw” in the relations between Western Europe and the communist bloc.

  • 1975 : signature of the Final Act of Helsinki which stops the perimeter and the principles of action of the CSCE.

The CSCE then the SOEC, they are 3 fields of competence called at the time “basket” and currently “dimensions”:

  • stability and safety,

  • economic cooperation, environmental, scientific and technical,
  • human rights.
It is at the same time about an action which is concretized through engagements theoretically politically constraining (adoption of democratic standards, codes of conduct) like 10 principles of action or “Decalog”:
  1. sovereign equality of the States
  2. refusal of the threat or the use of the force
  3. inviolability of the borders
  4. respect of the Territorial integrity of the States
  5. Pacific regulation of the disagreements
  6. non-interference in the interior matters of the States
  7. respect of the human rights and fundamental freedoms including freedom of thought, conscience, religion and belief
  8. equality and right in the self-determination of the people
  9. co-operation of the States
  10. respect in good faith of the international obligations

  • 1990 : Summit of Paris: the CSCE adopts the “Charter of Paris for new Europe” which gives to the Conference the means of answering the new challenges of the post-war period cold by equipping it with permanent institutions (Secretariat, Bureau of the Elections, Center prevention of the conflicts) and of operational capacities.

  • 1992 : the Conference of Helsinki completes the installation of the institutions of the organization: Forum of Co-operation for Safety, Economic forum, High commissioner for the National minorities. The 1st mission of ground is deployed with the Kosovo.
  • 1994 : the CSCE becomes the SOEC, the Organization for Safety and the Co-operation in Europe.
  • 1999 : Summit of Istanbul.

The structure of the SOEC

  • the Permanent Council is the principal Safety and Health Committee of the SOEC in charge with the consultations and decision making on the political plan. Its members, the permanent representatives of the 56 participating States, meet once per week in the Center of the congresses of Hofburg in Vienna to examine all the questions having milked at the SOEC, to make the suitable decisions and to react to the topicality of the organization. Sometimes very animated, the Permanent Council is often the reflection of the divergences which oppose the United States, European Union and Federation of Russia in particular on the questions interesting human dimension.
  • the Ministerial council is the annual meeting of the Ministers for the 56 participating States of the SOEC. It makes it possible to adopt decisions and to provide councils and orientations to the organization.
  • the President-in-Office , who is the Foreign Minister of the country which with the presidency, with the general responsibility for the execution. The presidency changes every year, in 2007, it is ensured by the Spain after the Slovenia in 2005 and the Belgium in 2006.
  • the Secretariat provides an administrative and organisational support to the presidency in order to achieve the goals of the SOEC. It has in load the management of the structures and the operations of the organization.
  • the Parliamentary Parliament , made up of 317 members (including 13 representatives of the National Assembly and of the Senate led by Mr. Close Michel, appointed Ain), holds two sessions per annum and adopts resolutions in the fields of competence of the SOEC. The President is elected for a one year renewable mandate once.

The SOEC has moreover three institutions likely to work against the “demonstrations of intolerance and the discriminatory practices”:

  1. the Office of the Democratic institutions and the Human rights (BIDDH), which has in particular a Contact point dedicated to the question of the Rroms and Sintis, and based with Warsaw and directed by an Austrian diplomat, Mr. Christian Strohal;
  2. the High commissioner with the National minorities , Mr. Rolf Ekeus (Sweden), based with $the Hague;
  3. the Representative for the Freedom of the Media , Mr. Miklos Haraszti (Hungary), whose buildings are next to those of the Secretariat of the SOEC with Vienna.

Participating states

Limits of the organization and criticisms

The European denomination of the organization today is very disputed, since this one gathers in fact practically all the countries of a broad half of all the northern hemisphere. Also, the SOEC made decisions concerning the political rights to the United States. But its field of application remains only advisory with the political plan. In term of safety, the action of the SOEC is slowed down by the conflicts of interests and the military lack of coordination between the Member States in particular in Central Asia, and the levelling mode of treatment of the voices in the SOEC, independently of the respective participations.

Also the SOEC does not have any force to make apply its deliberations, and NATO (largely dominated by the United States) or the forces Russian remains the armed wings ensuring the safety in all the area.

Moreover the organization proved to be unable to prevent the fatal armed conflicts in Balkans, and in Central Asia.

The SOEC is often criticized by the Russia and some other States for its partial attitude and its interference in the interior matters of certain countries of the ex-USSR, going until the ideological, financial preparation and logistics of the electoral revolutions usually called revolutions of color. This standpoint largely slowed down the dialog within the SOEC since integration many old countries of the block Is in the European Union and the crushing weight of the Union to the Council of Europe, and in the other European organizations, whereas in same time NATO was reinforced considerably on the army ground, including in its operations in Central Asia (in particular in Afghanistan) and in Balkans.

Intervening on February 10th, 2007 with Munich in front of the Conference on safety, Vladimir Poutine highly criticized the activity of the Organization for safety and the co-operation in Europe. “One tries to standardize the SOEC to make of it an instrument with the service of a group of country to the detriment of an other”, declared the president Russian. “Such is the task continued by the bureaucratic apparatus of the SOEC, which absolutely does not have any bond with the countries founders, by what one calls the non-governmental organizations, formally independent but actually financed and, consequently, controlled”, the Head of the Russian State underlined.

So the United States preserves the control of NATO, only effective armed wing in Europe when this one should have intervened. The role of the organization is more that of an political organization in a strict sense, that of an organization charged to take care of the safety of Europe. Its structure supports the discussions for the smallest countries.

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