Madame Chairperson,

We welcome Ambassador Igli Hasani back to the Permanent Council in his new capacity and thank him for providing us with the overview of the Co-ordinator’s activities.

The OSCE second dimension plays an important role in advancing cooperation as well as promoting peace and security in the OSCE region. Meanwhile, the OSCE Co-ordinator on economic and environmental activities performs a useful function of assisting participating States in their efforts aimed at implementation of the economic and environmental commitments.

As it is rightly mentioned in the report, despite the Covid-19 pandemic, this year we have experienced a number of successful events in the framework of the second dimension. In particular, Ukraine has been actively involved in the Economic and Environmental Forum cycle and the Economic and Environmental Dimension Implementation Meeting. The participation of high-level representatives in these events proves that both topics – women’s economic empowerment and anti-corruption – are under special attention by the Government of Ukraine.

We share the Co-ordinator’s view on the necessity to adopt a substantial MC decision on strengthening security in the OSCE region by advancing women’s economic empowerment as an important pre-requisite.

Likewise, we support the OCEEA’s work in the context of water management as we have already experienced a positive co-operation with the Office in this sphere. 

We took note of the Office’s intention to launch a new initiative aimed at providing support to Ukraine and Belarus in the area of disaster risk management in the territories affected by the Chornobyl disaster.

In general, the OCEEA activities in the area of good governance, climate change and hazardous waste management are much welcomed.

In the field of energy security, we believe that it is highly important to promote co-operation based on transparency with a focus on green technologies and renewables, that not only helps to reduce the environmental footprint of energy usage but also contributes to avoiding politization of the energy security issue.

Dear Ambassador, 

We encourage you to pay particular attention to the current environmental threats in the OSCE area: occupied and militarized Crimea and Donbas severely affected by the ongoing conflict.

Just to remind some of the environmental implications of these illegal actions: a naval base of the Russian Federation that ruins Crimea’s unique flora and faunas, flooding of mines and contamination of drinking water in eastern Ukraine, hostilities and intensive mining of Donbas that destroy the environment and affect seriously population.

In this regard, I would like to quote the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who stated at the COP 26 UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow the following: “Agreement are worthless if they are just words for someone. In 1994 Ukraine received security guarantees that were not fulfilled, and the planet received two eco-bombs in the centre of Europe: the occupied Crimea and part of Donbas”.

The environmental consequences of the Russian occupation administrations’ illegal activities present a common threat to the whole region.

And we need to see the OCEEA’s meaningful engagement in the protection of the environment in the conflict-affected areas. We do believe that the further elaboration of the OCEEA mechanisms to monitor and protect the environment under the challenging circumstances will be to the benefit of all participating States. 

In this regard, we also share your hope that participating States will be able to agree on new commitments on the linkages between the environment and security in order to prevent further environmental deterioration in the OSCE region.

We encourage the OCEEA to continue its important work aimed at assisting participating States in fulfilment of their commitments in security-related economic and environmental spheres.

Finally, we support the Co-ordinator’s intention to increase the OCEEA’s visibility and, we would welcome regular overviews of the activities in the second dimension.

We wish Ambassador Hasani all the success in his work and reiterate our support to the activities of his Office.

 Thank you, Madame Chairperson.