BALTIC SEAENVIRONMENT PROCEEDINGS No. 59 - Helcom

obligations. When fulfilling HELCOM’s tasks, it is utterly important that all the countries,
institutions and individuals involved contribute with their share of work, knowledge,
experience and information, whatever the need may be.
Please, Ladies and Gentlemen, be active during this Seminar, do not hesitate to make
questions and to participate in the discussions. Whether this Seminar will be a success or
not, depends on you, to a large extent.
As some of you may not be so familiar with the HELCOM organization and procedures, I
will here give you a brief introduction.
The HELCOM oraanization in short
The Commission consists of delegations from the Contracting Parties. At present, these
Governments are Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Lithuania, Poland, Russia and
Sweden.
Latvia, who has not yet acceded to the Convention, acts as an observer country to
HELCOM.
Other observers of HELCOM are the following international governmental organizations:
Commission of the European Communities (CEC)
Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC)
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
International Baltic Sea Fishery Commission (IBSFC)
International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES)
International Maritime Organization (IMO)
Oslo and Paris Commissions (OSCOM/PARCOM)
United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (ECE)
United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)
World Health Organization, Regional Office for Europe (WHO/EURO)
World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
We have also non-governmental international organizations as observers to HELCOM, such
as World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), Coalition Clean Baltic (CCB) and Stichting
Greenpeace Council, Greenpeace International.
Also some additional countries, as well as several financial institutions and observers
participate actively in HELCOM PITF, of which you will learn more later on today.
The Commission meets regularly once a year, usually in February or March.
The Commission has four Committees: the Environment Committee (EC), the Technological
Committee (TC), the Maritime Committee (MC) and the Combatting Committee (CC).
Furthermore, the Programme Implementation Task Force (PITF) was established to work
with the implementation of the Baltic Sea Joint Comprehensive Environmental Action
Programme.
The Committees, too, meet once a year, whereas HELCOM PITF has several meetings per
year.
The Committees have permanent or ad hoc working groups, which, in principle, discuss
issues and prepare proposals to be forwarded to their relevant Committee. The Committees
discuss, among other things, the proposals of their respective working groups and prepare
matters for the Commission to decide upon.
5