According to the decision, the OSCE’s Unified Budget for the period from 1 January to 31 December 2018 is 137,801,200 EUR, that is a 2 million EUR reduction in comparison to the 2017 budget. This does not include funding for the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine that operates with a separate budget.

Despite the efforts of the EU Member States and many other OSCE participating States, it was not possible to achieve an agreement on an increase of budgetary resources for OSCE autonomous institutions. Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) will operate with the same amount of funding as in the past year, while High Commissioner on National Minorities and Representative on the Freedom of the Media will profit from only very limited increase. Still, the resources for ODIHR represent one of the most significant budget items, a third of whose is used for election observation and support of fair elections.

The approved budget also allocates funding for the OSCE field missions. Currently, they are hosted by 13 participating States as the OSCE Office in Yerevan discontinued its operations on 31 August 2017. The OSCE Mission in Kosovo has the largest budget among all field missions. It focuses on good governance and inter-communities’ relations above all.