ABSTRACT
In the preparatory phase of the second Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) follow-up meeting in Madrid the basis was laid for an effort to bring the meeting to its conclusion in March 1981 would have more breadth and content than the one of its predecessor of Belgrade. The series of recommendations respectively deal with the agenda, the follow-up system and the rules of procedure which reign the CSCE-meetings. In the options for an institutional framework for the CSCE suggested by theorists in the early seventies, much attention was paid to the possibility of establishing organizational links with the UNO. Formal reservations and interpretative statements are necessary escape mechanisms which accelerate the decision-making process if adequate use is made of them. An intensive use of unilateral interpretative statements and formal reservations would open the way for each state to dine a la carte and, in the end, rob consensus of its meaning as the ideal of the CSCE.
