Follow-up conferences to the Helsinki Accords were held in Belgrade (now Serbia) in 1977/78; Madrid, Spain, 1980/83; and Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, in 1985. The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989/90 and the imminent reunification of Germany necessitated a second CSCE summit to officially end the Cold War: this summit took place in Paris in November 1990. The human rights guarantees contained in several provisions of Basket III proved to be a permanent source of East-West disputes after the signing of the agreements in 1975. Soviet action against internal disagreements in the late 1970s and early 80s led Western nations to accuse the Soviets of making parts of human rights agreements in bad faith, while the Soviets insisted that these were purely internal affairs. Helsinki Agreement, also known as the Helsinki Final Act (August 1, 1975), an important diplomatic agreement signed in Helsinki, Finland, at the conclusion of the first Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE; now the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe). The Helsinki Accords were above all an attempt to reduce tensions between the Soviet and Western blocs by ensuring that they jointly accepted the post-World War II status quo in Europe. The agreements were signed by all European countries (with the exception of Albania, which was signed in September 1991), as well as by the United States and Canada. The agreement recognised the inviolability of borders in Europe after the Second World War and committed the 35 signatory states to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms and to cooperate in the economic, scientific, humanitarian and other fields. The Helsinki Agreements are not binding and have no treaty status.

Following a meeting of Foreign Ministers in Helsinki in July 1973, the committees met in Geneva to draw up an agreement which lasted from September 1973 to July 1975. The main interest of the Soviet Union was to obtain implicit recognition of its post-war hegemony in Eastern Europe through guarantees of the inviolability of borders and non-interference in the internal affairs of states. In exchange for their official recognition, the United States and its Western European allies urged the Soviet Union to make commitments on issues such as respect for human rights, expanding contacts between Eastern and Western Europe, freedom of travel, and the free flow of information across borders. The Final Act, signed at a Helsinki Summit, reflected both points of view. The agreement, in fact, marked the official end of World War II, as it recognized all European national borders (including the division of Germany into two countries) that had arisen in the aftermath of that war. Sucked in by the Soviet Union since the 1950s, a European Security Conference was proposed by the Warsaw Pact in 1966 and accepted in principle by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Preparatory talks at ambassadorial level were opened in Helsinki in 1972. In the coming months, an agenda consisting of four general themes or „baskets“: (1) European security issues, (2) economic, scientific and technological cooperation and the environment, (3) humanitarian and cultural cooperation, and (4) follow-up to the conference. .