6. Europe: the institutionalized security process

Summary

The process of adapting the European security
organizations to the post-cold war environment made further progress in
1998. The three Protocols of Accession to NATO, which had been signed
with the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland in December 1997, were
ratified by the parliaments of the NATO members and the aspirant states
in 1998 and early 1999. This laid the legal foundation for the
enlargement of NATO in March 1999, prior to the Washington NATO summit
meeting held in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the signing of
the North Atlantic Treaty. In March 1998 formal negotiations were
opened with six candidates for membership of the European Union (EU).
Qualitatively new tasks were entrusted to the Organization for Security
and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) as a result of developments in 1998
in the Kosovo conflict in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

Decisions
adopted during the year bore witness to the fact that the European
multilateral security organizations are no longer based on a
relationship between two adversarial alliances but on a common system
of values among states. In 1998 the European security debate focused to
a great extent on the future missions and mandates of the major
security institutions - NATO, the EU, the Western European Union (WEU)
and the OSCE - and their interrelationships as well as on the role of
the major powers within these organizations.

The
European security organizations will need to take creative and bold
action if they are to implement the necessary reforms to be able to
prepare for and address the security risks and challenges to Europe in
the next century. The December 1998 British-French Joint Declaration on
European Defence, the Saint-Malo initiative, presented some 'fresh
thinking' on and mapped out the future direction of European common
defence within the EU. In consolidating transatlantic relations and
coordinating the activities of these organizations, the United States
must become a member of genuine partnerships rather than a hegemonic
actor in NATO and the OSCE and in its relations with the EU and
individual European states.

Appendix 6A. Documents on European Security

Appendix 6A reproduces the texts of the Oslo Ministerial Declaration, the British–French Joint Declaration on European
Defence and the Act of Ratification of the North Atlantic Treaty by Poland.