COPENHAGEN, 23 September 2010 – Serhiy Shevchuk, Rapporteur of the OSCE PA’s General Committee on Economic Affairs, Environment, Science and Technology, spoke at the OSCE Special Experts Meeting on assessing the OSCE’s future contribution to International Energy Security Co-operation, held in Vilnius, Lithuania 13-14 September.

Co-organized by the Kazakh OSCE Chairmanship, the incoming Lithuanian Chairmanship and the Office of the Co-ordinator of OSCE Economic and Environmental Activities, the meeting brought together over 200 representatives from the OSCE participating States and Partners for Co-operation, international organizations, as well as business and academia. The role of the OSCE and its potential in promoting energy security was the main focus.

Addressing the meeting, Mr. Shevchuk (Ukraine) underlined that energy security is not merely an intergovernmental but a truly transnational issue. He highlighted the several OSCE PA Declarations that underline the importance of energy security issues. Most recently, he pointed out, the Oslo Declaration, adopted at the 19th Annual Session on 10 July, proposed a number of recommendations that governments should implement to ensure energy security.

The speakers expressed a divergence of opinions on the substance of the issues under discussion, and Mr. Shevchuk assured participants of the readiness of parliamentarians to join actively in working out principles of early warning, crisis management and post-conflict management in the case of energy confrontation in the OSCE region.