Abstract
The CSCE (Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe) was born with the Helsinki final act in 1975, as the territorial statu quo seemed definitely taken for granted by both the communist block and western countries. On the 1st of August 1975, 35 heads of states from Europe, the US and Canada signed the Final Helsinki Act (or the Helsinki accords), a political, non-binding agreement. It can be traced back to the 1950s when the Soviet Union began to devote to a desire to have a kind of 'post second World War peace conference'. The CSCE was first of all a conference that would undermine the cohesion of the Western alliance by bringing it to a common table with totalitarian countries in order to achieve a certain consensus and, even more importantly, would lead to the division of Germany and the borders of Soviet influence in Eastern Europe. The CSCE was only a conference and has been instutionalized subsequently, by a series of follow-up meetings, which monitored the implementation of the Final Act and became practically the only mechanism ensuring the vitality of the process.
