Unpublished paper for the Federal Foreign Office
The jumping-off point for this report was the observation that, on the one hand, nearly all of the parameters of European security – the military situation, the conflicts, the normative divide – are constantly worsening. On the other hand, none of the European security organizations have been able to substantially contribute to improving the situation. This is also the case for the OSCE, which has been gravely neglected by many of its participating States. The OSCE’s political potential has been nowhere near exhausted. This is especially true for the development of a pragmatic cooperation programme between Western nations and Russia that addresses the central issues of European security.
Against this backdrop, the Policy Planning Staff of the Federal Foreign Office tasked the IFSH’s Centre for OSCE Research (CORE) with studying how the OSCE could be more effectively utilized as an instrument for addressing the core issues of European security.
The report was produced with the help of many. Two groups of experts from almost a dozen countries provided short papers and discussed them in Zoom meetings. This dialogue was supplemented by telephone interviews and a review of OSCE-related literature and documents.
The report was written by Wolfgang Zellner, the project’s research director., Senior Research Fellow, former Deputy Director and longstanding Head of the Centre for OSCE Research of the IFSH.
Read the complete study here.