Center for Security Studies

Summing Up Switzerland’s 2014 Chairmanship of the OSCE

Summing Up Switzerland’s 2014 Chairmanship of the OSCE

Author(s): Christian Nünlist
Series: ISN Blog
Publisher(s): International Relations and Security Network (ISN), ETH Zurich
Publication Year: 2014

The Swiss presidency of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) was dominated by the escalating Ukraine Crisis. Dealing with one of the worst crises in the Euro-Atlantic area since the end of the Cold War was a huge challenge for Swiss diplomacy. Switzerland emerged as an innovative, impartial, and effective crisis manager, but the Ukraine Crisis also clearly demonstrated the limits of the consensus rule within the OSCE. In the end, it led to a serious erosion of trust in the security architecture designed in 1975 and fully implemented after 1990.
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