On 4 January, the European Union External Action Service (EEAS) posted a call for contributions to a new EU Mission to Armenia (EUMA) that would monitor the country’s fragile and sometimes volatile border with neighbouring Azerbaijan. Most positions for the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) civilian mission would be secondments from EU countries and 69 are currently being advertised with a deadline of 19 January.
However, in a post on LinkedIn, Tobias Pietz, Deputy Head of Analysis at the German Centre for International Peace Operations (ZIF), wrote that the mission could be as many as 100 and that a decision on its deployment was due to be made at a meeting of the EU’s Political and Security Council (PSC) on 10 January. The mission, he noted, would be “strongly supported” by the European Union Monitoring Mission (EUMM) in Georgia.
EUMM, incidentally, made up the temporary European Union Monitoring Capacity (EUMCAP) that was deployed in Armenia for two months in October last year and which ended in December. Since the end of its mission there have been numerous calls for its extension or transformation into a dedicated mission along the lines of EUMM and a Transition Planning Assistance Team had already been dispatched to Armenia to prepare for this likelihood.
An EU technical assessment team also arrived in Yerevan on 9 January for the same reason and met with Armenia’s Foreign Minister, Ararat Mirzoyan, and Security Council Secretary, Armen Grigoryan. Also present at the meetings were the head of the EU Delegation to Armenia, Andrea Wictorin. “Mirzoyan lauded the role of the EU monitoring mission in bolstering stability in the region,” an official statement read.
Azerbaijan, however, has not been so enthusiastic, with its Foreign Minister, Jeyhun Baramov, saying on 27 December that any new mission should first be discussed with Baku.
Indeed, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev also complained about any new mission in a press conference held yesterday, 10 January. “It will not increase security,” he stated, also alluding to Baku’s displeasure with France’s role in the process, “but on the contrary will undermine the format of negotiation [with Armenia]. […] France has in fact completely isolated itself from the process. Now there is only American and Russia.”
Though Armenia is free to choose what is deployed on its own soil, the situation becomes a little less clear given that its border with Azerbaijan has not been officially demarcated, something the EUMCAP was initially deployed to assist with. Whether there is still the need to have Azerbaijan on board, even if only reluctantly, as might well have the case with EUMCAP when the decision to send as part of talks held in Prague on 6 October, remains unclear.
And while, then Ambassador-designate of the Czech Republic to Yerevan shied away from naming those countries that might object to a proper EU monitoring mission to Armenia in one sentence, he preceded it with quite the opposite in a 20 December interview with Radio Free Europe. “Our mutual task […] is to try to show all sides involved that a mission like that would be useful,” he said.
“So let’s work with the Azerbaijanis, let’s work with the Russians as well, […] trying to show and prove that you are happy with the involvement of the European Union. […] I can just hint that not all parties involved were as happy with the mission, with the small observation mission as Armenia […] was. Let’s work with those who were not that positive about the EU mission and let’s try to prove that it can be helpful.”
Certainly, if EUMM in Georgia’s record is anything to go by, the EUMA mission would indeed help calm tensions on the border, although it cannot prevent incidents or slight geographic changes, as has been the case along the Administrative Boundary Line (ABL) for South Ossetia. Nonetheless, EUMA would presumably be able to work with Armenian border communities and perhaps even with journalists from across the dividing line as has been the case in Georgia.
Unfortunately, it is unlikely that by virtue of being deployed on the Armenian side only that an Incident Prevention and Response Mechanism (IPRM) will be established given that EUMA will only operate in Armenia and there will be no mission deployed in Azerbaijan. Incidentally, when I put this issue to International Crisis Group (ICG) analyst Zaur Shiryev on 27 September he said this was because Baku does not want an “internationalisation of the border.”
For now, however, it remains unclear if any of this will prevent a EUMA deployment, although it is quite possible that it will also require a decision from the EU’s Foreign Affairs Council as was also the case with the temporary EUMCAP mission. Indeed, on 5 January, Finland’s Crisis Management Centre advertised for personnel to be seconded while stressing that “no decision has yet been made on the establishment of the EUMA mission.”
“Also,” it noted, “the exact location of the possible operation or tasks, the security or accommodation arrangements, or the operation specifics of its service relationship remain unclear. According to the preliminary schedule, the establishment of the mission is to be decided at the end of January and for its operation to start at the end of February. If the mission is launched, departure for the tasks can take place to a quick schedule.”
Regardless, if such a mission does get a final go-ahead by the end of the month, some speculate that its duration will be for one year. Though this might sound short it should be pointed out that EUMM in Georgia currently works on a rotating two-year term pending further extension. This would presumably turn out to be the case for EUMA’s mission too.
