Petros Efthymiou, the newly elected OSCE PA President, addresses the Assembly on 10 July.OSLO, 10 July 2010 – The 19th Annual Session of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly ended today with the adoption of the Oslo Declaration and the election of Petros Efthymiou (Greece) as the Assembly’s new President.
Mr. Efthymiou, who was a Vice-President in the Assembly, defeated Senator Consiglio Di Nino (Canada) by 130 votes to 64. The new President succeeds Joao Soares (Portugal) who has served as President for two one-year terms.
In his address to the Assembly upon being elected, Mr. Efthymiou laid out two key priorities of his presidency: one, increasing the effectiveness of the PA’s work, “with a balanced approach to our agenda and a policy of equality towards all participating members,” and two, ensuring “a stronger role for the PA itself, with the enhancement of its position, both within the OSCE and in relation to our governments and other international organizations.”
The Assembly also elected three new Vice-Presidents, Riccardo Migliori (Italy), Alexander Kozlovskiy (Russia) and Oleh Bilorus (Ukraine), while Isabel Pozuelo (Spain) was re-elected.
The Oslo Declaration, available in English, French and Russian, contains the resolutions adopted during the Annual Session in Oslo, in which 250 parliamentarians participated. The resolutions spanned a wide range of issues, from the situation in Kyrgyzstan to the Parliamentary Assembly’s involvement in the OSCE Corfu Process, the peace process in the Middle East, nuclear security, cybercrime, the situation in the Arctic, investigative journalism, and the death penalty.
The three General Committees of the Assembly also elected new officers for the coming year. In the General Committee on Political Affairs and Security, Karl-George Wellmann (Germany) was elected Chair, Canan Kalsin (Turkey) Vice-Chair and Tonino Picula (Croatia) Rapporteur. In the General Committee on Economic Affairs, Science, Technology and Environment, Roland Blum (France) was re-elected Chair, Ivor Callely (Ireland) Vice-Chair and Serhiy Shevchyuk (Ukraine) Rapporteur, and in the General Committee on Democracy, Human Rights and Humanitarian Questions, Walburga Habsburg Douglas (Sweden), Robert Aderholt (USA), and Matteo Mecacci (Italy) were all re-elected.
