Helsinki-II Negotiations : The Making of the Pan-European Intergovernmental Organisation

The CSCE (Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe) follow-up meeting held at Helsinki in the first part of 1992 was intended to be an historic gathering, not only for the CSCE itself but also for the new extended Europe.

The potential seminal importance of Helsinki-II, as it came to be called, was that within a short span of no more than three months the "north" was to find novel and more effective ways and means to be able to address the increasingly pressing complex problems it was facing, and in so doing perhaps become a new regional intergovernmental organisation (IGO), if not in name at least in fact.

In this, Helsinki-II can claim comparison not only to the original Helsinki/Geneva Conference which conceived of and launched the CSCE, but also with the conferences that founded major intergovernmental organisations, such as the United Nations, NATO, and the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), with critical imprint on regional and/or global international relations.