New Library of Parliament Publication on Canadian Involvement in European Institutions

The Library of Parliament has just posted a new publication on its website entitled International Organizations in Europe (Canadian Involvement).

Canada is involved in more than a dozen European organizations, ranging from the Arctic Council to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly and the Council of Europe:

"Europe has the most extensive political architecture of any region in the world. After World War II, several international organizations (IOs) were set up to reduce long-standing tensions among European countries, facilitate economic reconstruction and development, improve cooperation in a broad range of policy areas, and ensure the security of European sub regions. Since the late 1980s, existing organizations have grown substantially in membership and scope, and additional ones have been created, while Soviet Bloc IOs have disappeared. This has occurred in a period of profound change, characterized by the end of the Cold War and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union, economic globalization, growing awareness of the increasingly global nature of environmental, economic, social and cultural issues, and an unprecedented growth in the number of democracies in the world (...) "

"This paper provides an overview of the sometimes confusing political architecture of Europe. To do so, it will briefly describe Europe’s major international organizations, including their parliamentary assemblies, and Canada’s involvement in them. The paper focuses on three types of IOs: organizations of European governance; transatlantic security organizations; and other, primarily European, organizations with non European membership."