On August 1, 1975, 35 countries signed an agreement in Finland which, by its principles, marked the start of the Cold War Regulation. This final act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), which must in particular guarantee the inviolability of borders, is celebrating its fifty years today. If this text has served as the basis for peacekeeping in Europe, its birthday is now celebrated while war is rampant again in Europe.
For the occasion, the Finnish capital organized a conference on Thursday 31 July. Present at a distance, the Ukrainian president, called on the world to work for a “Diet change” In Russia, and to confiscate Russian assets rather than to freeze them.
On site, no senior Russian official was present to hear this call. Other distinguished guests were on the other hand, starting with the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk, as well as the Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andriï Sybiga. Fifty years ago, the Helsinki conference had nevertheless managed to bring together antagonistic leaders.
The beginning of the end of the Cold War
The signing of the Helsinki final act in August 1975 was the culmination of several years of diplomatic efforts. Ten years after the Cuba missile crisis, considered today as the paroxysm of the Cold War, the two blocks, from the East, as from the West, met in July 1973 to lay the foundations of a appeasement of their relations.
The idea of a conference that would inscribe black on white the principles of this “relaxation” comes from the leader of the Soviet bloc, Leonid Brejnev. Since the 1950s, the USSR has been expecting western states that they recognize the territorial division of Europe traced by the iron curtain. The European Economic Community, joined by the United States, finally accepts dialogue. All see in this conference the opportunity to slip into the text some standards to their advantage.
The discussions began in July 1973. All of Europe was invited, including the Holy See, which has participated in its first international congress since 1815. The Holy See would have even been the instigator of the third “basket” of the Conference on Human Rights and Freedom of Consciousness. Each “basket” represents a theme of the conference. The objective is to collect, for each of them, various suggestions on the part of the participants. We thus find a basket on security, cooperation, and ultimately, human rights.
Borders inviolability
Two years of negotiations make it possible to achieve a key principle, the inviolability of borders: “The participating states hold each other for inviolable all their borders as well as those of all European states and therefore refrain now and in the future of any border attack.” Interpreted in the East as the victory of a status quo on sharing of Europe, it is not considered as such in the west. Westerners have indeed integrated another principle into the final act, that of the modification of borders by way of peaceful agreement in accordance with international law.
It emerges from the other two baskets a whole series of standards: national sovereignty, free circulation between the two blocks, human rights, authorization of binational marriages between the east and the west … So many regulations made by the USSR to re -enter its image after the different revolutions of 1968. Only in the late 1970s, the Cold War warmed up with the Euromissile crisis, and the arrival of Ronald Reagan UNITED STATES. It was not until 1983, and the arrival of Gorbachev in power, to see the implementation of Helsinki’s advances.
Inheritance institutions
The first space of real dialogue between the two blocks, the Helsinki agreements constantly constitute a corner stone in the resolution of the Cold War in Europe.
The introduction of the question of human rights also encouraged the creation of the NGO Helsinki Watch in 1978, renamed ten years later Human Rights Watch. The Helsinki agreements mark indeed “A renewed interest in human rights, with particular attention to religious freedom, considered one of the foundations of the new architecture of cooperation, from Vancouver to Vladivostok”, recalled Léon XVI, Wednesday July 30. The Pope, reacting to the massacre of this weekend against a Catholic community gathered in prayer in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), thus called to preserve “
Ingenated now by the OSCE, which today brings together 57 countries, “ L’Sprit d’Helsinki However, sees its foundations widely called into question since the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in 2022. kyiv indeed demanded the exclusion of Russia from the OSCE. But if Moscow announced, in July 2024, to suspend its participation in the organization’s parliamentary assembly, the country still appears as a Member State on the official website of the organization.
