Charter of Paris for a New Europe

The Charter of Paris for a New Europe was adopted at a summit held in Paris from 19 to 21 November 1990, attended by most European governments together with Canada, the United States and the Soviet Union, building on the 1975 Helsinki Accords to draw the former Eastern Bloc into the West's post-Cold War order. It established an Office for Free Elections in Warsaw, later renamed the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, a Conflict Prevention Centre in Vienna, and a secretariat that appointed its first Secretary General in 1992, and it forms the agreed basis of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, later amended by the 1999 Charter for European Security.