Chair,

The group of Nordic Baltic states, Iceland, Denmark, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Sweden, and my own country Norway, would like to express its full confidence in the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen.

We commend her engagement with Georgian stakeholders and her clear support for fundamental OSCE commitments, including freedom of expression and peaceful assembly. 

Her appearance near the Tbilisi protests does not diminish the Chair’s impartial role nor the importance of principled dialogue. In the Helsinki Final Act, all participating States committed to promoting the effective exercise of rights and freedoms of all individuals. 

In the 1991 Moscow Document, we all agreed that third-dimension commitments are matters of direct and legitimate concern to all participating States, and do not belong exclusively to the internal affairs of the state concerned.

We welcome the Chair’s continued efforts across the South Caucasus and support her mandate in full. 

Thank you.