This landmark document provided an agreed set of basic principles governing the behaviour of states toward each other and to their own citizens — focussing in particular on human rights issues.

The Helsinki Final Act is not a legally binding document but there can be no doubt that its human rights provisions helped to stimulate the democratic revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe, thereby contributing to the end of the Cold War. Today, the Final Act still provides the “rules of the road” for inter-state relations in Europe and constructive guidelines for the development of democracy in all European countries. It is an excellent code of conduct for international relations.

In the early 1990s, some argued that NATO should be disbanded and replaced by the CSCE. They said that both NATO and the Warsaw Pact were remnants of Cold War European relations and that both should disappear. Such comparisons were misleading. NATO is and always was a voluntary alliance among independent countries. Warsaw Pact participation was imposed on its members by the Soviet Union.

NATO governments and the many countries that wished to join NATO, decided that both NATO and the CSCE had important roles to play in the cooperative European security system which was beginning to emerge. The fact that there was no longer a serious military threat from a hostile regime did not mean that security could be taken for granted and both organisations had their part to play in making Europe a safer place.

Meeting in London in July 1990, NATO leaders agreed that one of their goals was to strengthen the role of the CSCE as one of the pillars of European peace and stability. NATO reaffirmed this approach at its summit in Rome in November 1991. As an important token of NATO’s intentions, at a NATO ministerial meeting in Oslo, Norway, in June 1992, it was agreed that, on a case-by-case basis, NATO would provide support for peacekeeping operations initiated by the CSCE.

The Alliance also called for measures to strengthen the CSCE’s ability to prevent conflicts, manage crises and settle disputes peacefully. Shortly after the meeting in Oslo, as the extent of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia became increasingly apparent, NATO made a similar offer to provide support for UN peacekeeping operations – as was in fact already happening.

If the CSCE was to take on an expanded operational mandate it needed resources. As a “process,” existing CSCE structures were not capable of supporting a more ambitious role. In December 1994, a CSCE Summit meeting agreed to turn the process into a fully-fledged organisation – hence the decision to rename it OSCE.