For his outstanding leadership advancing the cause of peace Javier Solana, former High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy of the European Union and Secretary General of NATO, will receive the Ewald-von-Kleist Award of the Munich Security Conference this coming Saturday, February 6th. The prize will be awarded for the second time this year. Last year’s laureate was the former US-Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. READ MORE

Polish-German relations are still full of a number of difficulties and mutual claims READ MORE

Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy have unveiled a new 10-year plan, including 80 projects designed to improve Franco-German cooperation. The goal is also to better promote European ideas globally. READ MORE

2010 is very momentous for the OSCE: the 35th anniversary of the Helsinki Final Act as well as the 20th anniversary of the Charter of Paris, which has put an end to the ‘Сold War’, are to be marked. READ MORE

Moldova and Ukraine pose problems for each other on the way to Europe, but in fact the main task for both of them is to overcome the common Soviet past. READ MORE

The Russian factor in this year’s Ukrainian presidential elections is essentially a straw man and far less important key than five years ago. Russian political technologists openly worked for one candidate (Viktor Yanukovych), while Moscow allegedly sought to poison the opposition candidate (Viktor Yushchenko) and President Vladimir Putin visited Kyiv on the eve of the first and second rounds to endorse Yanukovych. Putin congratulated Yanukovych on his “victory” two days after the second round –and one day before the central election commission had released the official results. READ MORE

The economic and financial crisis of the past year underscored the extent to which, after experiencing the ‘globalisation of opportunities’, we are now facing the ‘globalisation of problems.’ This shift reflects the transformation of a world which has become much more interconnected, interdependent and complex, characterized by many new state and non-state players. READ MORE

Ankara tries to play a new role as an energy nod. READ MORE

The new 2010 year was marked by new incidents within Georgia-Ossetia relations. And although there are no confrontations even slightly reminding the situation of 2004-2008 first days of this year were marked by a number of alarm symptoms … READ MORE

Following the results of the meeting with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan his Russian colleague Vladimir Putin suggested to deepen the cooperation within energy sphere by assets exchanging. First of all the case is about the access to the resources of Black and Caspian Sea and the gas transporting system of Turkey. Also Ankara promises to arrange all approvals for the South Stream piping till November. Gazprom says that now Turkey stands in one list with its other strategic partners – Germany and Italy. READ MORE