The return of armed conflict to Europe raises questions about the endurance of the foundations of Europe’s post–Cold War security architecture. For decades, European security relied on the assumption that dialogue, restraint, and shared norms could mitigate rivalry and prevent escalation. This assumption was rooted in what has often been described as the Helsinki spirit, which embodies commitment to cooperative, comprehensive, and indivisible security.

The 32nd Ministerial Council of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), held on the 4th and 5th of December 2025 in Vienna under the Finnish Chairpersonship (“OSCE Ministerial Council Reaffirms Continued Relevance of Helsinki Principles and Sets the Path for Reforms to Strengthen the Organization | Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe” 2025), took place amid persistent geopolitical tensions and ongoing conflicts within the OSCE area. While Participating States reaffirmed OSCE’s foundational principles (“OSCE Ministerial Council Reaffirms Continued Relevance of Helsinki Principles and Sets the Path for Reforms to Strengthen the Organization | Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe” 2025), the gap between declared commitments and prevailing realities was evident. This article examines the relationship between the gradual weakening of cooperative security practices and Europe’s current crisis, using the Ministerial Council as a key analytical point of reference.

The Helsinki Spirit and the Foundations of Cooperative Security

The Helsinki spirit originated in the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, which established a multilateral framework for managing political and military rivalry between the East and the West through dialogue rather than confrontation. The Helsinki Final Act was a child of detente, which was used as a tool of comprehensive relaxation of geopolitical and ideological tensions between the superpowers at the time, the Soviet Union and the United States intact (Bajrektarevic 2014). Its core idea was that security could not be durable without mutual restraint, respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, and adherence to human rights and fundamental freedoms.

The Helsinki principles were deliberately formulated in broad terms to allow states with divergent political systems, historical experiences, and security perceptions to coexist within a shared geographical space through the mutual recognition of all borders in Europe – and hence acceptance to coexist in geography and with ideology of its own choice (Bajrektarevic 2017).

After the end of the Cold War, the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) set on a new course in managing the historic change taking place in Europe and responding to the new challenges of the post-Cold War period. CSCE was not created as an enforcement mechanism (even though certain elements could have been enforced) but as a confidence and dialogue-building process (“Reviving the Helsinki Spirit” 2024). Hence, in its elements, the Helsinki spirit was a norm-setting entity with a monitoring compliance mechanism. The Helsinki spirit, therefore, followed geopolitical and ideological dynamics of overextension of superpowers, hence it migrated from political will/accord, into legal and normative order. In December 1994, CSCE became institutionalized as OSCE by a decision of the Budapest Summit of Heads of State or Government, which gave it its current institutional form we know today. (“History | Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe,”)

Early Fractures in the European Security Order

Debates about the current crisis focus on its most visible manifestations, particularly the full-scale war in Ukraine. However, from a structural perspective, the erosion of cooperative security is debated to have begun far earlier than 2022. Competing interpretations identify critical turning points in 2014 (the annexation of Crimea), or even in the immediate post–Cold War period (the early 1990s), and the Yugoslav crisis (1990s).

However, the fractures can be traced even to an earlier point, which was the non-compliance with the 1945 Potsdam conference decisions (Oxford Public International Law 2009). Allied forces agreed to demilitarize and neutralize Germany at the conference. Instead, the 3 Western occupation forces (UK, USA, France) decided to form Western Germany and to remilitarize it by forming a military alliance in Europe, NATO (NATO History | NATO), which was directly contradictory to the Potsdam Conference Peace Treaty.

During the period of German reunification (1990s), discussions about the future of European security architecture were led among Western leaders and the Soviet leadership. These talks, while not in the form of international treaties, included repeated assurances that NATO would not expand eastward beyond the territory of the former German Democratic Republic (“NATO Expansion: What Yeltsin Heard | National Security Archive,”). This was also reaffirmed by the Federal Chancellor of West Germany, Helmut Kohl, and the Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs of West Germany, Hans-Dietrich Genscher at the time. These statements, however, have since become part of a contested historical record in light of subsequent developments (Němcová et al. 2013).

From a diplomatic and legal standpoint, the absence of formal treaty obligations complicates retrospective assessment. Nevertheless, the divergence between political assurances and subsequent institutional developments contributed to a growing perception, particularly in Moscow, that the principle of indivisible security was being applied unevenly.

Selective Application of Collective Security

The question of inclusive European security predates the end of the Cold War. At the Potsdam Conference in 1945, Allied powers agreed on the demilitarization and neutralization of Germany as the key to postwar stability (Oxford Public International Law 2009). Yet in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the western occupation zones evolved into the Federal Republic of Germany, which was rearmed and subsequently integrated into NATO.

In contrast, Austria (which was under four-power occupation: US, UK, France, Soviet Union) emerged as a unified, demilitarized, and permanently neutral state in 1955 (Oxford Public International Law 2024). This arrangement, accepted by all four occupying powers, three Western and the Soviet Union, contributed to Austria’s long-term stability and regional predictability. These differing outcomes illustrate an early divergence between collective and selective approaches to European security.

These historical precedents illuminate a recurring tension between security arrangements designed to include all actors equally and those used to consolidate security for some while generating insecurity for others. This gradual shift from inclusive to selective security practices has been and remains a structural challenge to the Helsinki security framework.

Then came Federal Socialist Yugoslavia: External actions that intensified confrontational forces within Yugoslavia, the manner in which the implosion of that country was handled by European actors (especially the 1000 days long barbaric siege of the Olympic city of Sarajevo), and the subsequent external bombing campaign — which reportedly included strikes on civilian infrastructure and the alleged use of munitions containing depleted plutonium — represented another major blow to the collective security architecture in Europe, particularly within the OSCE framework.

To multiply controversies and unfortunate symbolics; The NATO bombing of Belgrade – city were the Nonaligned Movement was born in 1961, and that was carried out without authorization from the UN Security Council (nicknamed ‘Merciful Angel’ !?!), marked the first bombing of the city since the Nazi attacks in the 1940s.

The intervention, conducted without UN endorsement, ultimately led to the separation of part of Serbia’s territory and induced recognition of Kosovo as an independent – but still today a non-UN member, state. These violent episodes remain a source of significant controversy today and continue to lack broad consensus in both academic and political spheres, being very often cited by the defenders of the Crimea annexation that came 15 years after.

The OSCE as a Forum and Its Structural Constraints

The OSCE continues to function as the principal multilateral framework in which European states, alongside partners from North America and Central Asia, engage on an equal and inclusive basis. OSCE’s annual Ministerial Council is intended to set political direction, reaffirm commitments, and provide strategic guidance (“Secretary General Feridun H. Sinirlioğlu’s Report to the 32nd OSCE Ministerial Council | Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe” 2025). Therefore, both International Institute IFIMES and GAFG (Global Academy for Future Governance) closely follow and support the work of the OSCE; It regularly by organizing their own side events at major annual OSCE forums and summits.

At the same time, the 32nd Ministerial Council showed the growing limitations of the OSCE’s consensus-based decision-making model. While consensus preserves inclusiveness and procedural equality of the organization, it also constrains collective action in periods of deep political disagreement. The council’s outcomes reaffirmed institutional continuity, but substantive outcomes remained limited, reflecting a broader pattern of dialogue without convergence.

Ukraine and the Return of War to Europe

The war in Ukraine has dominated the OSCE’s agenda for several years, and reaffirmed support for Ukraine was featured prominently in ministerial statements in 2025 (“31st OSCE Ministerial Council | Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe,”; “Secretary General Feridun H. Sinirlioğlu’s Report to the 32nd OSCE Ministerial Council | Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe” 2025). While the conflict escalated dramatically in 2022, its roots are embedded in earlier political, security, and institutional developments. The Ministerial Council’s discussions reflected both shared humanitarian concern and profound disagreement over responsibility, causality, and resolution pathways.

The persistence of war within a region governed by cooperative security norms underscores a central paradox, which is that principles designed to prevent conflict continue to be reaffirmed, even as their practical application becomes increasingly contested and constrained.

Fragmentation of Shared Meaning

Despite repeated reaffirmations of Helsinki principles, their interpretation now varies significantly among Participating States. The states hold diverging threat perceptions, historical narratives, and security priorities, which have fragmented the shared understanding of sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the non-use of force.

This fragmentation represents one of the most serious challenges to cooperative security. As several scholars, including Prof. Anis H. Bajrektarevic, have argued, norms lose their stabilizing function when their meaning starts to disappear, even if their language remains formally intact finally bringing the devolution of security – from collective to selective (Bajrektarevic 2014).

The 32nd Ministerial Council, however, demonstrated that cooperation persists in specific areas, such as humanitarian protection, media freedom, countering human trafficking, youth participation in mediation, and arms control (“OSCE Ministerial Council Reaffirms Continued Relevance of Helsinki Principles and Sets the Path for Reforms to Strengthen the Organization | Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe” 2025). These initiatives reflect the continued relevance of the OSCE’s human dimension and preserve essential elements of the Helsinki spirit.

Nonetheless, such cooperation increasingly occurs in compartmentalized settings, largely detached from the core questions of military security and strategic stability. While these efforts are valuable, they alone cannot substitute for a shared vision of collective security.

Continuity Without Convergence, reversing the Security devolution trend

The Vienna meeting symbolized institutional continuity amid strategic divergence. Procedural resilience and leadership transition are preserved. Nevertheless, shared strategic direction remains absent. The endurance of dialogue with a weakening collective agreement within the OSCE can be described as continuity without convergence. A question remains as to how continuity can be sustained over time, particularly in the face of deepening differences.

The 32nd OSCE Ministerial Council suggests that Europe’s security crisis is not the result of a single rupture but of a cumulative weakening of cooperative security practices. The Helsinki spirit has not disappeared or been abandoned. The Helsinki spirit has been instead sidelined as security has become increasingly selective rather than collective.

The OSCE remains a necessary platform for dialogue and normative reference. Yet the return of war to Europe highlights the limits of institutional frameworks when inclusivity, trust, and indivisible security are no longer interpreted in the same way. The Helsinki principles remain a possible foundation for renewed engagement. Whether those principles can once again function as the organizing principle of Europe’s security order depends on political will and a recommitment to truly collective security by all states.

(About the author: Silvie Drahošová is a Vienna-based, Central European University fellow (CEU Culture, Politics, and Society) with experience in research, strategy, communications, and project coordination across international organizations. She recently joined the Global Advisory for Future Governance (GAFG) as a Project Officer, where she supports research activities, conference development, and stakeholder engagement.)