OSCE Ministerial Council Meeting in Vilnius

The 18^th session of the Ministerial Council of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe takes place in Vilnius on 6-7 December 2011. The delegates are to review the OSCE activity in 2011 and outline the main directions for the coming year. A number of decisions are planned with respect to all three dimensions of the OSCE (political-military, economic and the human dimensions). The Polish delegation is led by Undersecretary of State Bogusław Winid.

On the margin of the meeting a joint initiative of Foreign Ministers of France, Germany, Poland and Russia was announced, referring to the idea of the Astana Commemorative Declaration: Towards a Security Community agreed upon during the OSCE summit in Astana in December 2010. The project is based on the series of seminars to be organised in 2012 by institutes from the four states that are to support the discussion on the future character of security community within the OSCE. The seminars are to result in a report, along with recommendations to be presented in the Autumn of 2012.

The initiative of the four Ministers is part of the idea of creating a network of academic institutions of the OSCE states, proposed by the OSCE Secretary General in July 2011. Poland will be represented by the Polish Institute of International Affairs which pledged to organize one of the seminars in Warsaw.

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Ministry of Foreign Affairs